The Week of Ill Repute
by Chudley Cannon
Summary: [WICKED FIC] Bookverse Takes place during Chapter 8 of Part II, when Glinda and Elphaba make the journey from Shiz to the Emerald City, which took more than a week’s time. This is what happened during. ElphabaGlinda
1. The Roads Meet On The Rain Cloud

The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: "Wicked" is owned by Gregory Maguire, who I think disclaims ownership of such well-known characters as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good, and as do I. L. Frank Baum owns them. Do I wish I owned Maguire's Glinda? Indeed. I wish I were married to her, in fact.

Author's notes: Bookverse. Certain personality features may be borrowed from the musical, but it is strictly bookverse. Takes place during Chapter 8 of Part II, when Glinda and Elphaba make the journey from Shiz to the Emerald City, which took more than a week's time. This is what happened during.

* * *

Chapter 1: The Roads Meet On The Rain Cloud

It was much to the obvious chagrin of Glinda that they, she and Elphaba, should be treated as third-class citizens and travel as such, but the honest facts were that they _were_ indeed third-class citizens – a person such as Glinda or Galinda of the Arduennas of the Uplands was merely no one when they had not a cent to show for it, as she did not. This only serves to explain that if Glinda was not already exceedingly annoyed with Elphaba for pulling her away from the fun of the previous night (as the Philosophy Club no doubt was), she now possessed an irrational annoyance with her green friend for the trip to the Emerald City, by carriage, which they were told would take a bit longer than a week.

On that first day, they did not speak, in fact Glinda glared out the carriage window for hours at a time, which suited Elphaba just fine. She had more than a few books to read and that was what she did. And the carriage was silent because the other travelers were weary and silent as well.

It was when they arrived at their first pit stop and Elphaba had closed her book and gathered up her lone parcel containing the desired extra traveling cloak and such, that Glinda realized she would have to break her vow of silence owing to 1) the silent treatment had almost no effect on the psyche of Elphaba; conversely, she seemed to rather _enjoy_ it and 2) she had brought a few more traveling things than Elphaba had and currently needed some help in carrying them off the carriage.

Squawking, "Elphaba!" desperately, she thrust out a bag for Elphaba to hold, muttering "Thank you," to her in the most important tone she could muster when Elphaba took the bag. But from there on they silently agreed (or, rather, Glinda in her head agreed) that the fight was over and it was all right to speak.

Their first rest was an inn, the Clatter and Clank, where they ate fine enough on cheap enough. As night fell, the creaky walls of the inn became tired and unwilling to block out the cold, doing nothing to stop it from seeping in and chilling Glinda to her bones.

"I should be happy to have a place to sleep at this point, I think," remarked Glinda and Elphaba agreed, although they could only afford one room on their budget. Glinda carried the worn key (as Elphaba was saddled with all the traveling parcels at the moment), brass and hanging from a wood carving of a bird whose chest proudly proclaimed "8," up two flights of stairs above the kitchens.

It was seedy, to say the least, the corridors painted white and stained with brown, the odd thump of sex and aggression sifting through the thin, exhausted doors. An odor permeated throughout that made Glinda wrinkle her nose in distaste and Elphaba comment that if she were to pinpoint how exactly she thought it smelled in Briscoe Hall, she need only turn to the current waft.

The room itself was cold and cramped. Glinda decided it would be more than fair to call this room half the size of their room back in Shiz – as it was, it only possessed half the beds. One. Small and lumpy and not adequately clean looking, there was a single pillow and a surprisingly cheery yellow blanket. It was atop this that Elphaba set their packages, and then collapsed into the small wooden chair stationed adjacent. That was it for the furniture. A window was above the bed and an anonymous portrait hung carelessly on the wall by the door, almost as an afterthought.

Glinda sat on the bed gingerly, looking over the blanket with distaste. It didn't seem outwardly soiled, but it didn't shout of cleanness, either. She poked it. "Elphie, do you wonder—"

"No," said Elphaba. Now it was her turn to glare out a window, into the black. "It isn't anything I would wonder about."

"Well, I find it charming," said Glinda resolutely, determined to not complain, "and I'm certainly looking forward to sleeping underneath it tonight, if only to—"

"Glinda," Elphaba said in a foreign way. She was still Galinda in her mind, beautiful and vain Galinda who thought only when it suited her. "There are certain wretched experiences that can shape a person, but I don't believe this to be one of them."

"That's disgruntlement talking," she replied decisively. "You'll have the floor, then, if you're to insult my bed."

Despite herself, Elphaba found amusement creeping in, although she hid it beneath the shadow of her hood. "That's very third-class of you to not offer your guest the bed," she remarked. "Although, you've been decidedly third-class all day and it seems only fitting that you should remain so."

"You mean girl," huffed Glinda, standing up from the bed and stripping out of her gown. "It _is_ just like you to remind me of the very thing I was angry at you for." She sat primly on the bed, clad in only her under things, as she searched through her several bundles for the desired nightgown. "No, no, no, the blue, the blue..." she muttered, propelling Elphaba to cock an eyebrow.

"Am I to discern from what I've overheard that you packed _more_ than one nightgown?"

Glinda sniffed defensively, pulling the neatly folded nightgown of powder blue out and unfolding it. "Only three, as that's the length of time I thought our travel would take. As it was, I didn't mind having to re-wear them on the journey back, but had I known it would take more than a _week_..." She sighed, slipping the nightgown on over her head. The white frills at the neckline were more than a little ridiculous, she knew, but they would surely keep her neck warm.

Elphaba looked at her and said, "You resemble a head bobbing up and down in the froth of the ocean." She imagined. She herself would not go near it.

"And _you_ resemble a wicked, stealthy character," replied Glinda, referring to Elphaba's dark hooded cloak.

"Ah, perhaps I am."

Having cleared the bed of their possessions, Glinda hesitantly lifted the cover of sunshine and slipped under it, distaste marring her delicate features as she scooted toward the wall and placed her head delicately on top of the pillow. "Is there no fire in here? Come, I'll let you share my bed," she teased. "It's the least I can do."

"You rest," said Elphaba, curling up in the chair. "I'll do fine here."

Glinda did her finest imitation of a scowl. "Mustn't have you staring at me the entire night – no, it's no good."

Elphaba chuckled. "My resemblance to a wicked, stealthy character is frightening you, I see. No, I had not planned on staring at you the entire night; I had planned on reading—"

Glinda cut her off. "You'd have to read without candlelight for I'm asking you to put it out. Your eyes will become strained and you'll never read again."

"I'll risk it," replied Elphaba with more than a small amount of amusement in her tone.

"I'm cold."

"Oh, fine, you bothersome..." She trailed off, standing from her chair and putting out the light. In the dark, she undressed and redressed in what seemed like hours to a shivering Glinda, who found that the blanket was too short and made her feet jut out the other end. Finally, the bed creaked and Elphaba slid in a bit, and stayed so close to the end of the bed that Glinda feared she might topple over it in her sleep so she said pitifully, "Still cold!" and Elphaba crept closer to her, and they met in the middle of the bed and a bit of her lovely, peculiar hair found its way into Glinda's mouth.

"Good-night, Elphie," said Glinda to Elphaba's back, pulling the hair out of her mouth and snuggling against the long, bony body next to her. It smelled good, of nothing sweet or flowery, but good all the same.

"Good-night, Glinda," replied Elphaba to the dark, but she did not sleep. She lay awake and protected Glinda. She listened to the beds creak in surrounding rooms and listened to the wind whistle and could not discern exactly what she felt she was protecting Glinda from, but only knew that she was.

It seemed hours later, then, when Glinda had kicked her enough times to make Elphaba want to remove herself from the bed, or better, kick her back, when Glinda awoke. Elphaba, who was facing the middle of the bed now, watching her tumultuous roommate kick around, watched her head suddenly raise, mussed blonde ringlets flailing about her head, a rosy flush capturing her cheeks. She breathed heavily.

"Where!" cried Glinda.

"Here," said Elphaba soothingly. "Back to sleep with you." She stroked Glinda's hair as Glinda wrapped her arms about Elphaba's bony frame and nestled her head against the scratchy material of her nightgown-clad arm.

"Cold," mumbled Glinda against the arm and Elphaba replied that shh, it was rather cold and to go to sleep. The Gillikin girl drifted off to sleep and the wind shook the walls.

* * *

On the second day, Glinda secured a seat that faced forward in the carriage and even let Elphaba have the window seat this time, although she pretended that she had been dealt an unlucky hand of cards and was discontent in her misfortunes. The wind was horrid that day and whistled songs that Glinda could not decipher.

"I wonder about them," she said very suddenly, turning to Elphaba. "And how they made off at the Philosophy Club that night." She was eager for conversation, as the previous day had been so devoid of it.

But Elphaba had drifted off to sleep, Elphaba her protector and Glinda tried her best to do the same and reciprocate the protection. The dark head tilted toward her and rested on her shoulder and Glinda smelled the hair, which still smelled very good.

One of their carriage companions looked vaguely familiar as though he might have been from Frottica or the like, as he was most assuredly a Gillikin. Although he did not seem to recognize her in the least, he studied her intensely and handsome though he was, he was not so handsome that Glinda would allow his eyes to devour her so. She was ready to say something when she realized that it was not she whom he was staring at, but Elphaba and his eyes roved her skin as narrow slits, his lip curling in distaste.

"Sir," said Glinda evenly as possible. "You _are_ staring, and it is impossibly rude."

The man scowled and glared, but did stop staring. And there, Glinda felt she'd done her best job at protecting.

Elphaba awoke around mid-afternoon and yawned and was grouchy with sleep for the first few moments of conversation before she became talkative and charming (in her own way) again. That night was a new inn (The Easy Burrow) in a new room that was very similar to the last room.

On the third day, it rained, beginning in the afternoon as a light sprinkle that Glinda watched over the top of Elphaba's sleeping head out the window of the carriage as the lush landscape passed by leisurely. Elphaba, who had fallen asleep against Glinda's shoulder but had later moved to being curled up against the window, awoke with a jump at being face-to-face with a rather steady (at this point) stream of rain, and it took her moments to realize that the rain was indeed _outside._

"You frightened bird," said Glinda affectionately. "We should arrive in an hour's time."

"It will let up by then, I think," said Elphaba, but she was wrong and the rain only came down harder as the day progressed, nearly physically thumbing its nose at Elphaba who stared out the window in what Glinda could almost swear to be a pout. Today's inn had the very funny misfortune of being called The Rain Cloud to which Glinda remarked "Dreary!" as she helped swaddle Elphaba up in her cloak and then added her own coat for good measure. She ran into the inn, coatless and carrying all their belongings. Commiserating over the loss of her lovely blonde curls as the rain hit them, she watched Elphaba bound as quickly as she could toward the inn, avoiding puddles. Inside, she helped the Munchkinlander remove her things and took them, making sure to not let the wet materials touch her.

"It is rather fitting that I should start to share your disdain for water," said Glinda as they ate, "for, look what it has done to my hair."

Elphaba, bless her, was in a rare mood that allowed for her to not mock or tease, but to instead silently and sympathetically nod in agreement. They ate their meals and were full and Glinda even tried to cajole her friend into having some of her share, as Elphaba was looking even narrower than usual. Elphaba declined, though, and could not apparently go an entire day without a mocking remark because she said, "If you can magick up another sandwich, I'll eat it, but I daresay they might throw us out if they see you exploding their food."

Glinda grumbled and looked offended, but had the presence of mind to not mention that she could only levitate sandwiches on very, very good days and that conjuring was far beyond her.

The trek up to their room had Elphaba into another of her ranting moods. "It becomes clearer and clearer that we are getting closer to the Emerald City."

"Does it?" asked Glinda, wondering if perhaps the air became greener the closer you got to it.

"There are less Animals at every stop, do you notice?"

Glinda, who had not noticed, nodded and tsked that it was a shame.

"I've counted only one here, that Tsebra huddled in the back, frightened of anyone even seeing him, much less sharing a meal with him. And what room will he get? There are worse ones than this one, I'm sure," she gestured to the tiny room she had just unlocked, as they walked in, "and he'll be the one to get it."

"You talk much, Elphie," said Glinda tiredly as she collapsed on the bed. "But I don't think I'd see you giving up this room, horrid as it is, if that Tsebra were to ask for it."

"I don't envy his position and I would not trade positions with him. I shouldn't have to. He should be offered the same things as anyone."

"Well—" And here Glinda shrieked as the window above the bed burst open with the force of wind and she was sprayed with rain. Elphaba jumped backward, moving herself to the far corner of the room as Glinda jumped onto the bed and closed the window. "It's all right," she said. "I've locked it now." Climbing off the bed, she shook her head. "The pillow and sheets are all wet, though."

"They can join our things," said Elphaba, pointing to where they'd strung a line from the door to the window and hung their wet clothing on. "If you don't mind sleeping without a pillowcase or sheets."

"I _do_ mind, thank you," said Glinda. "We'll simply ask for another room, as it is not our fault that they do not think to lock their windows."

But the inn would not provide another room and so Glinda hung up the wet bed clothing and changed into her nightgown, sitting up on the stripped bed. She folded her knees up to her chest and rested her chin upon them, vowing not to sleep until their sheets were dry. "We'll both sleep in the carriage tomorrow."

"The mattress is probably, truth be told, a lot cleaner than those sheets anyway," said Elphaba, who would not stray near the window for fear that it might burst open again.

"I'll not sleep on this scratchy mattress," Glinda said resolutely and that was that. "Oh, you silly thing, come over here. I've locked the window and it won't open again."

"You only say that because it hasn't proven otherwise," said Elphaba idly, lingering near the door. "Once it does open and we're splattered with rain, you won't be so quick to say so." She did not say this fearfully, although Glinda knew that fear was most likely the ruling emotion. Seeing Elphaba show a weakness was one of those rare fascinating sights that she found odd with their intensity. Singularly strange, even, to want to protect and comfort someone who was so invariably frustrating. There were times, though, when Elphaba seemed vulnerable and weak and she was beautiful.

"Er..." said Glinda, feeling very inarticulate suddenly. She looked around the room, the barren walls. The Rain Cloud didn't bother with the formalities of putting up a cheery portrait. The still silence in the room was loud, but louder were the grunts and moans in the surrounding rooms, the beds creaking, the walls thumping. Glinda blushed and try as she might to avoid Elphaba's gaze, she did notice that the green girl was blushing as well, her cheeks dissolving into a darker shade of green.

"I think I'll change," said Elphaba awkwardly and did so, changing into her drab nightgown. Glinda averted her eyes in courtesy. After a few moments, she stood, moving toward the line. The groans next door were louder and louder.

"The sheets are only a bit damp now," she said, "and the pillowcase is dry."

Elphaba nodded.

Glinda paced back toward the bed. "If we were at Shiz right now, we'd be sleeping."

"Certainly not. We'd be studying."

"_You'd_ be studying. _I'd_ be—"

"Exploding sandwiches?"

"Meditating," she huffed. "Oh! It's irritating!" she cried, referring to the sounds coming from next door.

"Do you suppose they'd respond to some loud knocking and a very friendly plea to keep it down?" wondered Elphaba.

"I don't care to find out," said Glinda. "Come sit with me."

This time Elphaba agreed and the two of them sat on the mattress together. Glinda's nightgown tonight was of a light sea foam color, made of floaty almost translucent material that was solid enough to cover things, but see-through enough to have Elphaba catch herself studying her friend's legs. It was not that she had not seen them before; certainly, she had, but they had never been quite so close.

"What shall we do to pass the time?" asked Glinda suddenly, startling Elphaba out of thoughts that she didn't particularly want to be having in the first place. "I only wish I had thought to bring curlers, but not having known that the rain should choose to be so detestable, I didn't think to."

"You exhibit limited amounts of foresight," said Elphaba gravely.

"I'm not sure what you mean by that. You can watch me comb my hair, I suppose, or – in fact, we can share secrets."

"We could," she replied, "but wouldn't it be just as easy not to?"

"Oh, don't be silly!" Glinda folded her legs underneath herself and bounced a bit on the bed. "Just tell me one of your favorite secrets and I promise, valiantly, to never reveal it to anyone for as long as I remain alive."

"I _have_ no secrets."

"Nonsense. Fine, I'll go first. I was summarily besotted with Tibbett for a short while. Now, you."

"Tibbett?"

"For a _short_, forgettable fortnight. I forgot that he isn't the least bit charming. It's your turn."

"Glinda," said an impatient Elphaba. "I _haven't_ any secrets."

"Of course you do. You can confess your long time infatuation with Boq or –"

"_What?_"

"I'd rather you didn't confess that one, you know, as I already know it."

Elphaba clucked her tongue and stood from the bed, stalking toward a dingy armchair on the other side of the room and flopping down into it. "I assure you, I do not nor have I ever harbored any infatuation with Boq, really, of all people."

"Elphie!" cried Glinda, flitting across the room to perch on the arm of the chair. "It's all _right_—"

"Whatever would give you this ridiculous idea?"

"Oh, I don't know, it just seemed rather obvious with the way you mother him and all..." Glinda crossed her legs primly, looking down at Elphaba from where she sat in the armchair. "He's really not all so bad, you know, and he doesn't seem to want me anymore. I'd say he's a fine kisser, as well, you know."

If Elphaba were prone to horrified shock, her facial expression may have reflected that, but as it was her eyebrows did shoot up in mild surprise. "You've kissed him?"

"Yes, once – or rather, he kissed me." Noticing Elphaba's frown, Glinda smiled. "You do like him, for where else would this jealous scowl finds its source? There's no need, of course, it was that one summer that you came uninvited to Pfannee's, and it didn't mean a thing."

Elphaba swallowed. Why _was_ she jealous? She certainly had no feelings for Boq, of that she was sure, but there was this tight, coiled sensation in the pit of her belly that made her skin burn and that she could only label jealousy. Perhaps it was just the idea of it, of two people that she did hold a very strong affection for sharing something and not telling her about it. For, if she were to think very hard on it, Glinda and Boq were easily her closest friends and the ones she told most things to, if she had anything worth telling. She supposed it was just the idea that she hadn't known. That must have been it.

Clearing her head of thoughts, she said, "I _was_ invited," quickly and then dissolved into silence.

"Let us not quibble upon minutiae at the present," said Glinda dramatically. Oh, sure, she adored Glinda. She loved her, in fact, and had told this to Boq, and there was a part of her that wanted nothing but to protect Glinda and care for Glinda and watch Glinda grow and change and think. She was not, though, _in love_ with Glinda and she knew this for certain.

So, if her mind could kindly stop talking all over itself on the subject, it would be nice.

Elphaba put a finger to her temple and sighed. "I don't like Boq. Not in anyway more than a good friend."

Glinda shrugged, her formerly-carefully-curled-but-now-only-falling-in-waves hair bouncing at the shoulders. "Have it your way," she said, doing a top-notch imitation of a girl who didn't care much and was only looking for gossip, masking the unfailing relief she found at Elphaba's insistence. "Then you've still got to tell me something."

"Oh, fine," huffed Elphaba. "I... I was interested in going to the Philosophy Club that night."

"So was I," said Glinda, "but that was merely the champagne. I'm not interested in what goes on there, all the..." She blushed suddenly. "Well, you know."

"Sex."

"I wasn't going to _say_ it," mumbled Glinda.

"Precisely why I did. You can't say that you've never..." And she suddenly appeared to blush. "Or, perhaps, it's none of my business."

Glinda flushed so ridiculously that she clashed with her nightgown, which only made Elphaba feel worse. The green girl cleared her throat. "Sorry."

"I've never," said Glinda honestly.

"Oh!" Elphaba felt light-headed. "The sheets look dry."

Glinda bounded off the bed, relief in her step. She grabbed ahold of the hanging sheets and nodded. "Yes, they are. Help me put them on."

Inexplicably speechless, Elphaba nodded mutely and stood. They re-dressed the bed and put out the lights and they were silent, but the inn was still filled with sex and the situation was all the more uncomfortable and Glinda slid into the bed and Elphaba slid in next to her and Glinda said, "Good-night," and the woman next door seemed to finish, rather loudly, that is.

"Good-night," said Elphaba hoarsely. She moved her arm around Glinda's shoulders and Glinda snuggled in against her body, as this had become their normal sleeping position what with the smallness of the bed and the general cold weather. The storm crashed loudly, drowning out the sounds of the inn, and Glinda jumped a little and snuggled in closer.

"That wretched storm," she mumbled.

"It's all right," murmured Elphaba, trying to shove down her own mind-numbing fear of the storm. "I'm right here."

"Yes, you are," said Glinda slowly. She yawned and then peered up at her roomie with bleary eyes. "Good-night, you lovely creature." She yawned again and drifted off to sleep and Elphaba felt her heart or whatever it was that beat in her chest so maddeningly loud sort of melt and settle into her stomach, which clenched as it turned over and over.

She swallowed hard.

It was no good, really. It was no good to be in love with one's best friend.


	2. What Befalls Those With Morals

The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: Maguire's "Wicked" is still not mine, sadly enough. And Oz is still not his. So really, we're both just thieves.

Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews. This chapter contains a little too much of a weird thing I like to call "plot," which I confess to not really liking to write that much.

* * *

Chapter 2: What Befalls Those With Morals

Staying awake all night, Elphaba was finding, was not very difficult at all. While she admitted that, true, it would have been far easier if she could move or get out of bed and read some of the texts she had brought along with her, this was impossible. Glinda huddled close to her in the night for warmth and protection and one time Elphaba had gotten out of bed early in the morning when it was still dark. She had been sitting nearby, reading, when Glinda awoke from a dream as she often did (whether these dreams were good or bad, Elphaba did not know, for Glinda never spoke of them and called Elphaba "silly and aggressive" if she pushed too hard) and scolded her for leaving the bed.

So all night, Elphaba would remain in bed and she would not sleep and she could not read and all she could do was think. This suited her, as she was rather fond of thinking and thought herself to be even very skilled in the execution of it. Most times she thought primarily of Animals and their rights, or a lot of life sciences in general, or even the concept of religion and such despite how opposed she was to it, and recently she'd taken to dwelling on what she planned to say to the Wizard exactly. These thoughts could take on the order of hours and hours and would usually take her clear through the night.

This night, however, she could think of nothing but the blonde girl who lay nestled beside her.

And in that vein, the hours crawled along at a sorrowful pace.

The problem was, she reasoned, that one could not quite get comfortable when one slept with a tosser/turner/kicker like the one Glinda had turned out to be. Furthermore, the Gillikin had a penchant for making noises while she slept; mumbled phrases were popular as well as tiny, mewing sounds. Finally, the sleeping girl was burdened with lots of lovely hair that somehow found its way onto Elphaba's face or beneath her nose no matter how she tried to finagle her body to avoid it.

Really, how was one supposed to think productive thoughts at all under such circumstances?

_So you love her,_ thought Elphaba. _This is nothing new, in fact, I'm quite assured that you've felt this way for a very long time and just didn't realize the weight or its potency. Moreover, whether you were aware of this emotion or not (and I feel I've adequately established that you _were_), it doesn't change anything and there's no reason to behave differently. You're a logical girl, dear. Indeed, you pride yourself on your logic, and therefore you have most likely deduced that nothing will ever come of this silly infatuation. So stop running your fingers through her hair._

Looking down to see her long and slender fingers were indeed tangled within the creamy blonde locks that her mind had referred to, Elphaba snatched them away. _Good. Don't you feel as though we're off to a good start?_

"Yes, thank you," said Elphaba aloud to the dark, quiet room. She wondered if talking to oneself was a symptom of the disease or a side-effect of the cure. She wondered if it was both. She also wondered how much time had passed since Glinda had drifted off to sleep, and better, how much time she had before she was allowed to wake up Glinda and extract herself from this bed (which she had affectionately dubbed The Torture Chamber In Which Elphaba's Limits Are Tested).

Counting. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand...

* * *

"Barren as a blank page!" cried Glinda as she looked out the window. The rainstorm was no more and the scenery had given way to bare stretches of sand and dirt, the wildlife sparse and hopeless looking. Out the window, the dirt swirled angrily from the unmatched force of the wind. The carriage itself creaked along, swaying from side to side as if just the right gust could blow them off course.

"Another reason why first-class tickets would have suited us nicer," she commented, looking at Elphaba for her reaction (or lack thereof, as this _was_ Elphaba). "We would already be in the Emerald City and would have missed this ghastly windstorm!"

She waited expectantly for the dark, sarcastic quip that she knew Elphaba would toss her, the dry I'm-amused-by-your-stupidity-because-I-am-far-more-intelligent-than-you attitude she had come to expect from her roomie and traveling companion.

Nothing came. Elphaba stared straight ahead, appearing to watch the horses trotting out the front of the carriage.

Glinda frowned. This was new and peculiar. Perhaps Elphaba was having trouble thinking of a jibe that was good enough? That was all right; she'd make it easier.

"Well," she said, "call me stupid, but it seems as though the storm is getting worse!"

No response.

Glinda bit her lip. "Elphie, did you get any sleep last night?" she asked, concerned.

Elphaba glanced at her. "Yes, fine."

Glinda found this difficult to believe, due to the fact that every time she herself had woken up and shifted in the bed, Elphaba had appeared to be awake. There was the idea that perhaps it was just coincidental that they would wake up at the same time and there was probably some sort of ratio or percentage to the likelihood of that, but Glinda didn't have much of a head for numbers and didn't much care to figure it out anyway. At any rate, Elphaba was a good liar, but not that good.

Glinda nodded and grabbed her friend's hand, squeezing it. "I bet you're nervous about meeting the Wizard."

Elphaba scoffed and pulled her hand away. "Hardly."

"Elphie, it's okay!"

She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Glinda—" she began, before breaking off as she looked her in the eye.

"Yes?" replied Glinda, studying her best friend's hawkish features, the furrowed brow, the set angry mouth. And then it all sort of melted away and she relaxed and she looked... defeated?

She was not able to dwell on the peculiarity of this expression for too long because she was suddenly thrown forward into the lap of the man across from her as the carriage lurched and then stopped abruptly. The passengers of the carriage all shouted their dissatisfaction with being all over the place, because this action had unceremoniously put them all in a state of out-of-placeness.

"What the hell was that?" grumbled Elphaba, standing up and trying to get a good look.

Glinda admonished half-heartedly, "Elphaba," but she stood, too, and the seven other passengers in the carriage were saying things like, "What's the meaning of all this?" and "I've got to be in the Emerald City within four days – this better not delay us!"

Elphaba sunk back down in her seat wearily, closing her eyes. "Looks as though one of the horses hurt his leg and went down, and I suppose the rest of them just tripped over him."

"That's unfortunate," said Glinda, sitting down as well. "I do hope this doesn't hold us up for so long."

The passengers filed off the train to start complaining and hollering and talking at the driver, who was making helpless hand motions and gesturing at the horse as if to say, 'Well, it's not as though I asked him to make his leg go all lame!'

It was looking to Elphaba to be one of those long days. The carriage had broken down in the worst of spots where they hadn't remembered seeing civilization for a few hours, nor did it seem as though there were any nearby. They worried perhaps that the only sign of life for miles was the inn that they were ordained to stop at that night.

That, coupled with Glinda's damned habit of grabbing her hand, was making it a long, arduous day indeed.

"I wish I had thought to bring some of my books!" cried the blonde girl. "We've been studying spells that could, I'm sure, fix that horse's foot right up."

"Or get rid of it entirely," said Elphaba dryly. "In which case, he would not be much better off than he is now."

Glinda clucked her tongue in annoyance. "Must you always be so mean to me?"

"Where would intelligent, thinking individuals be without consistency, Glinda?" She watched Glinda pout, her adorable lower lip jutting out in woe. Elphaba sighed, standing up. "Let's go see what can be done."

They exited the carriage to join their travel companions in the dusty, abandoned outside world. The travelers were crowded around the horse, hands thrown up helplessly every so often as if to say, "Well, what to do?"

"Driver," shouted a man who was short and stout but had no Munchkin-like features, so Elphaba just assumed he was only unfortunate. "Let's leave the horse here; it's of no use to anyone!"

"You can't just abandon an animal like that!" cried a very excitable woman. "It's cruel!"

"Has anyone a rifle so we can put the thing out of its misery?" asked another man.

"Poor thing!"

"_I'm_ beginning to wish you'd remembered your book," commented Elphaba to Glinda. "Settle this whole thing. We'll never get to Emerald City at this rate, and we certainly won't get back."

"Elphie."

"I feel as though it would be incorrect of me to die here," she continued, looking around their present state in distaste. "Not that I thought I'd go in a rich meadow filled with poppies, mind you, but I never—"

"Elphie."

"—thought I'd go in a wasteland such as this. And you! You, of course, are far too good for this—"

"Elphie!" Glinda tugged at Elphaba's elbow impatiently and her green friend looked at her, annoyed. Glinda pointed. "Someone's coming," she said meekly.

Indeed someone was, as a carriage-shaped silhouette crept up the horizon. As it moved closer at varying speeds, the crowd hushed and there were relieved whispers all around. When the carriage had become close enough to make out specifics, they noticed that it was drawn by twelve or so horses, and that the carriage itself was a large trailer of some sort. Emblazoned on the side was "Lacchus's Horse Trading."

Elphaba's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Well, that's lucky."

The driver of the carriage reined his horses in and pulled to a stop. He jumped off the seat, a spry older man with dark auburn hair and ruddy cheeks. His eyes were bright and large and childlike. "Greetings, travelers!" he shouted. "I am Lacchus by name and I deal in the business of horses – and other animals – and the buying and trading of them! What seems to be the problem?"

"We've got a horse with a lame leg," said their driver, approaching Lacchus and removing his hat. "I've got to get these folks into the Emerald City within four days..."

"Not a problem!" cried Lacchus so excitedly that even Glinda flinched. "Simply give me your horse and I'll give you one of mine. I'll have his leg fixed up the next time I'm in town!"

It was a wonderful idea and the men all set eagerly to work, helping the hobbling horse into Lacchus's carriage and then helping to drag the appointed horse down from the cart and hooking him to the travel carriage.

It was a bit smaller than most horses, although not small enough to be declared a pony, and rather sort of pretty in that it was a steel gray sort of color with a mane and a tail the color of snow. It also had a large, almost perfectly round patch of white on the chest, almost like a bull's-eye. "Oh, it's a small one, all right," admitted Lacchus with a boyish grin. "But I've not got one more hard-working or obedient. He'll get the job done." The horse stared at the ground, hiding its eyes and whinnying softly.

"Thank goodness!" shouted a woman. An impromptu celebration had broken out at the idea of getting on with the journey. Glinda leaned against Elphaba and rested her cheek against the bony upper arm.

"We'll still make it to the Emerald City in good time, right, Elphie?" But Elphaba did not look as relieved as she, Glinda, felt, nor did she look happy in the least. Her gray lips were set in a mean little line and her eyes were slits as she glared at first the new horse and then Lacchus, who was celebrating as well.

"Sir," said Elphaba in an even tone so sharp that the celebrations subsided and the travelers quieted, all looking at her. "That's no horse. It is, most assuredly, a Horse."

The hushed silence became loud, startled whispers, a commotion of questions. "Are you insane, girl?" asked the unfortunately short man. "Or don't you want to get to your destination?"

Elphaba ignored him and directed her question toward Lacchus, who was making decidedly "Who, me?" gestures. "What right have you," she asked coldly, "to put this Horse to work as though he were some common animal? Is he receiving wages for this?"

"Of course not," said Lacchus angrily. "It's just a horse."

"He is not. You, speak!" She gestured to the Horse, which Glinda noticed did look up in recognition. "It's all right, then," said Elphaba in those soothing tones that came and went with her moods. "Just show them that you can speak."

"This is absurd!" shouted Lacchus and the general consensus seemed to agree. "That horse can't speak, I say!"

But then the Horse said in a deep and rumbly voice, "I can speak just as well as you! Better, I should think!"

Well, that made the travelers gasp and shout and chatter, and Lacchus balled his hands into fists and glared so fumingly at Elphaba that Glinda worried suddenly that he might hit her. "There you have it," said Elphaba triumphantly. "The Horse _does_ speak, and he is certainly not a working animal."

"Speaking or not!" shouted the short man, whom Glinda was beginning to notice had quite a fondness for shouting. "It can pull a carriage like any other common horse!"

"_He_, of course, can, I've no doubt," said Elphaba in calmer tones than Glinda suspected, judging by how the emerald girl's whole body was shaking. "But he should not have to, any more than you or I should have to. If he so _chooses_ to, that is another business entirely, but I should think he would receive wages for such a job and it is just as easy to just secure an actual horse."

The Horse appeared almost to smile as he looked at Elphaba. "Wages would be nice," he said wistfully.

"Ridiculous!" spat Lacchus. "I'll not pay it anything."

"Then, I'll not pull this carriage," the Horse said defiantly.

"I think that's settled," said Elphaba, smirking.

"Now, listen, girl," said the short man. "We need that Horse to get us to the Emerald City, and I'll not have you filling its head with ideas of wages and nonsense. A Horse can and should pull a carriage just like any other horse."

"Sir," said Elphaba. "Thinking individuals should not be expected to undergo slave labor."

"Unless he's got another horse to lend us," said the driver, "we'll have to use this Horse. Otherwise, we won't get to the Emerald City."

Elphaba wrenched herself out of Glinda's grip to glare at the driver. "Well, _I_ won't be going, then."

"Er, Elphie," whispered Glinda urgently.

"And he – I'm very sorry, sir, I did not catch your name," she directed toward the Horse, "—refuses to pull this carriage unless he is paid, don't you?"

"It is true!" cried the Horse. "And I am called Halivan."

"Pleased to meet you. I am Elphaba." She gestured to Glinda, who was worrying her lip in concern. "This is my traveling companion, Glinda."

"Of the Arduenna Clan," supplied Glinda half-heartedly.

"What is this!" The driver was simply beside himself. "Introducing yourselves? Making friends, is it? This horse – or Horse, whatever it may be, hasn't the right to _decide_ not to pull this carriage. It will!"

"That's just the thing," said Elphaba dismissively. "It _can_ decide. It is capable of decision. Its decision, as of now, is to not pull this carriage."

The driver fumed at her and then stalked away to mumble with the rest of the travelers, who were all giving her hateful looks. The driver asked Lacchus whether he had any other horses to supply them with and Lacchus shook his head.

"Driver," said one of the men. "How long should it take us to get to our next stop if we are short one horse?"

"Adding in the delay we already have, I'd say we won't get there until late tonight."

"Although I do not mean to speak for everyone," said the man importantly. "Perhaps that is best. The beast refuses to pull the wagon. Once we reach the inn, perhaps we can find another horse there. But as the situation stands presently, standing around is only offering us more of a delay."

The other travelers agreed with this.

"Excellent," said Elphaba, pleased. "Kindly unhook him, then."

The men did so, unhooking Halivan from the carriage. He trotted a bit ways away, thanking them profusely.

"And," said the driver, shaking hands with Lacchus for trying to help, as the horse trader moved back to his own carriage. "We may get there a bit faster than I thought, if the carriage is lighter. Which it will be, since we'll be traveling with one less traveler." And here he glared at Elphaba, as did the rest of their travelers.

"I? I've paid for my ticket like anyone else."

"It is you who has set us back so far in this delay! And I, as the driver, reserve the right to refuse service to you."

"You can't leave a person in the middle of nowhere!" cried Glinda, horrified. She grabbed Elphaba's hand.

"She's got a Horse with her, hasn't she? She's not without resources."

"Well, I'm staying with her!"

Elphaba blinked. "Get on the carriage, Glinda," she said quietly. "I'll meet you in the Emerald City in a few days."

"Certainly not."

"_Go_. There's no use in you being stuck here, as well."

Glinda sniffed haughtily. "I would not expect _you_ to leave _me_ here, and so you should hardly expect the same of me." She then put her nose in the air and looked away as if to settle the subject indefinitely.

"I don't care whether the both of you go, or just her," snarled the driver. "But you'd better get your belongings off my carriage, because we're leaving."

Elphaba glanced at Glinda and sighed, hurrying into the carriage. She gathered up their belongings and then exited, filing quickly past the crowd of travelers as they stared at her.

She, Glinda, and Halivan stood together as the travel carriage drove past them and then Lacchus's carriage drove past as well. They watched the two objects move off into the distance until they disappeared into the stretch of dirt and dust and sand.

"Now, I am sure there are farms nearby. Dirt farmers, I believe they're called. You find them in these places. We just need to look for one." Glinda seemed surprisingly upbeat, a startling contrast to the dull, sour look on Elphaba's face. "What is it?"

Elphaba's eyes locked on hers and they were so intense that Glinda's hand flew up to her mouth in surprise. "I asked you to get on the carriage," said Elphaba quietly. "Why do you insist on sharing my misfortunes?"

Glinda opened her mouth to reply and then promptly closed it. "Well, I..." she said after a few moments thought. "It wasn't fair of him to kick you off the carriage. And I... I mean, the thought of you out here alone, trying to get to the Emerald City... Well!"

"If you had stayed on the carriage, that would have ensured that _one_ of us got to the Emerald City." Elphaba shook her head. "You should have done as I told you."

"No, because then we would be split up right now, and I attest that I should not want us split up!"

"Glinda—"

"I wanted to _stay_ with you, Elphie! If _I_ had gotten kicked off the carriage, would _you_ have gone on without me?"

Elphaba closed her eyes. "Certainly not."

"There you have it, then."

They were both silent for awhile as Elphaba stewed in silent resentment and anger. She glanced at Glinda out of the side of her slitted eyes and frowned. "You are a stupid thing," she said finally. "Noble and stupid."

"Oh, Elphie!" Glinda unceremoniously threw her arms around Elphaba's neck, hugging her tightly. Elphaba was so startled that she could not return the hug, only stare unblinkingly at nothing. Glinda pulled away, a whirl of fresh-smelling hair whipping past Elphaba's face.

"Forgive me, ladies," said Halivan, stepping up toward them. Elphaba noticed that he was now standing on only two legs. "But I suspect that if we go westward, we will find the Yellow Brick Road."

"Oh, that's right!" Glinda smiled. "The carriages travel off the Yellow Brick Road, but yes, it should be to the west of us."

"I propose," said Halivan, "that the closer we travel west, the easier we will find a farm of some sort."

It was a good idea, and the three traveling friends set off to the west. Halivan urged Elphaba to let him do the walking and have she and Glinda ride him. She refused resolutely, but he wheedled her down, explaining that he wanted to help his new friends and that it was his way of thanking her for saving him from indentured servitude. So, Elphaba swung up on the horse and Glinda climbed up behind her. She, Glinda, insisted on riding side-saddle because any other way was improper.

And so, there they were, making their way across the barren land, Elphaba holding onto Halivan's mane and Glinda clutching Elphaba about the waist, her face buried in the long mane of black hair that flowed down Elphaba's back. The three travelers became old friends, and Glinda told long, lengthy stories of their exploits at Shiz and occasionally Elphaba chipped in with an anecdote or two. Halivan told them about his life, about his family that lived in the underground of the Emerald City, that he had been taken from them one day while traveling out of the city. He had been captured by Lacchus and had worked for the man for several months. His family, he knew, were rather worried and he was eager to see them again, show them that he was all right. Three children and a lovely wife.

They traveled late into the night and it was nearing ten o'clock when the Yellow Brick Road finally loomed into sight, far off in the distance.

"Oh, thank goodness," breathed Glinda, tickling the back of Elphaba's neck. "Civilization at last."

She was right, of course, for no sooner had they spotted the Yellow Brick Road than did they spot a small farm shack just beyond it. The three friends chattered in relief and happiness, knowing that their long arduous journey across the wasteland was coming to an end.

"I'm envisioning a kindly old woman who will know just what to do," remarked Elphaba. "I had not yet considered that it could be a fellow with a rifle and a temper."

"You _do_ make the most grotesque remarks," said Glinda as Halivan brought them right up to the house.

Elphaba climbed off and held out her hand for Glinda to take. The blonde girl took her hand cautiously, sliding down the great Horse's flank with a squeal. Elphaba brought out another quickly to catch her and snaked an arm around her waist in a bustle of skirts. She looked down at the beautiful Gillikin girl, close enough to be kissed, lips perfect enough for it as well. Her eyes were wide and innocent, looking up into Elphaba's face and the green girl wondered briefly what she looked like to her friend, whether she was frightening, whether the extent of her feelings were written in stark white letters against her green skin.

Halivan spoke suddenly and Elphaba released Glinda rather hastily, turning her attention to their new Horse friend. "Might as well knock on the door, Miss Elphaba. I'll stay out here."

Elphaba was able to eat her words when the owner of the shack greeted them. He was a young man, scarcely older than she or Glinda, Gillikinese and tall and muscular with obscene amounts of beautiful gold hair and a very perfected look about him. He was polite and eager to help although he didn't know the area too well, being from Traum in the Great Gillikin Forest.

"At any rate, I am Drauc, the Harbellows Descending of Traum, Gillikin, and should you require help in reaching the nearest carriage stop, I shall endeavor to help the best that I can."

"We thank you," said Glinda. "I am Glinda of the Arduennas of the Uplands and this is Elphaba, the Thropp Third Descen—"

"How do you do," said Elphaba shortly. "We've a Horse companion as well; he wishes to come with us."

Drauc, who appeared to be on a bit of a delay as far as information processing came in, said, "How very nice to meet the both of you, Misses Galinda and Elphaba."

"It's Glinda. The 'Guh' is silent."

"How improper. The proper Gillikinese pronunciation is—a Horse, you say? Does it, in fact, speak?"

"He does, in fact," said Elphaba. "He also laughs and sings, as well, although I wouldn't request of him the latter as it is not one of his better geniuses."

Elphaba's brand of humor seemed lost on Drauc, whose only comment was, "Extraordinary. Do come in." This he directed only toward Glinda and Elphaba, as his small little house didn't seem to fit too many people in the front room, let alone a Horse.

The house, however small, was extravagantly decorated in rich fabrics and colors, with expensive furniture. There was a small front room comprising a dining room and kitchen, a sitting room to the right, and two bedrooms in the back. They all seemed to be furnished as lovely as a palace that had been condensed into only a few rooms.

He offered them tea on fine glassware and sat them down and explained how he had come to live in what was essentially a tiny cabin just off of the Yellow Brick Road when he was from a large estate on the outskirts of the Great Gillikin Forest. "You see," he said, "my father is the mayor of our village within Traum. He, at a rate slower than I would like, is becoming feeble and dying, and I am to take his place. Not only to become mayor, though; I should like for the Harbellows to have a place in all of Traum and that I should become the governor of Traum. This is why I am studying diplomacy and political relations once a week from a man in the Emerald City."

"What an interesting story!" cried Glinda, who had not cared a bit. "Then, you must know the carriage line from here to the Emerald City very well."

"This is true," stated Drauc. "But there is nothing to be gained from traveling to the inn tonight, for (as you well know), the inns stop accepting travelers after a certain time, and we are soon past that time. Hence, you will stay here for the night, although I worry that I do not have enough room for your Horse friend, of whom I admit fascination to meeting, having never met one such as... that is, you do not see many of them in Gillikin, and with the Banns in place, you very hardly see any at all in the areas surrounding the Emerald City."

"Such is misfortune," said Elphaba. "I should think that Mister Halivan will be quite fine sleeping in your sitting room, although he is too big for a sofa."

"I will adhere to the wishes of my guests," said Drauc gallantly. "I'll do up the guest room for you both if you will fetch your... Mister Halivan."

"What do you make of him?" asked Elphaba as she and Glinda started outside to find Halivan.

"He's the very picture of politeness," said Glinda. "And charming to the point of wonder. What do you make of him?"

"He's taking us to the carriage stop and letting us stay. I fear he may molest one or both of us."

"Oh, Elphie," admonished Glinda. "You do say the most detestable things."

Elphaba glowered a bit. The night was cool and breezy, the sky devoid of any points of natural light. "I do not like smarmy men, nor do I like those who cannot keep their eyes in their head anytime a pretty girl enters the picture."

The old Galinda may have said, "Well, can you _blame_ him?" or "I should like to be thought of as a grade or more better than 'pretty'." But this Glinda only shrugged and said simply, "It is as it is. I have a feeling that the bastardization of my given name rather put him off."

Elphaba called, "Mister Halivan, are you about?"

"I'm here, Miss Elphaba," said Halivan, stepping out of the shadows on two feet and moving toward them. "How is our kind stranger?"

"Nearly too kind," said Elphaba. "But he has offered us a place to sleep for the night and deliverance to the carriage stop tomorrow."

"That is splendid."

"It is. And you'll be sleeping in his sitting room, on the floor, I suspect."

"Oh!" said Halivan. "I say, it has been far too long since I've had a place to sleep that wasn't a stable."

"Too long indeed," agreed Elphaba. "Come along. Our host seems especially eager to meet you."

Drauc, upon meeting Halivan, first attempted to bow and secondly offered a hand to shake and then seemed frightened by the hoof thrust out at him and dropped his hand quickly. Then he stumbled over words for a moment or two, trying to decide the best thing to say to the Horse and finally settling on nothing at all.

"He isn't usually this talkative," said Elphaba. "Mister Halivan, this is Master Drauc, Harbellows Descending of Traum. This is Mister Halivan."

"How good to meet you," said Halivan and Drauc virtually whimpered in response. "And how very kind of you to let us stay with you."

"It is nothing!" Drauc burst out in a high-pitched voice. "I do hope you find the floor comfortable!"

"Anything is more comfortable than hay. If it is all right by you, I shall retire." And he did so, lying down on the floor of the sitting room while Drauc watched in amazement, although at a certain point, only Halivan's hooves were visible from behind the sofa where they watched.

"Well!" said Drauc as they moved off into the kitchen. "He's an interesting sort, isn't he? How did you happen upon him?" He directed this toward Glinda, of whom he offered his arm. She appeared nervous, unsure of whether to take his arm or not.

"I don't know about Miss Glinda, but I am tired," said Elphaba hastily. "I think I shall retire as well."

Glinda let her arm fall to her side, sighing in relief. "As will I. Thank you for your kindness, Master Drauc."

"Not a bother!" said Drauc. "We'll head off to the carriage stop first thing in the morning." As the girls departed for the guest room, he gestured to the door right next to it. "I am right next-door, should you need anything."

"We won't," mumbled Elphaba under her breath as she and Glinda escaped into the guest room, shutting the door behind them. This room, similar to the rest of the house, was extremely well-furnished but small. The large double bed seemed to take up three-fourths of the room, but it was clothed in expensive silks of gold and crimson. The candles were lit around the room and there was an oak vanity where Drauc had put their traveling parcels.

"How are you faring, Elphie?" asked Glinda. She sat on the bed and studied the bed sheets. Lovely.

"I am not as tired as I should be, having not slept in more than a day."

Glinda pouted. "I _knew_ you didn't get to sleep last night. You lied to me. And you really had better rest."

"I better had," said Elphaba with a shrug. "But sleep does not come at my willing it to; it comes when it damn well pleases."

Glinda shook her head, mildly scandalized. "I think I should just shuck all pretenses of being shocked by your tongue. Help me out of this." She stood and presented Elphaba with her back, of which the dress zipped all the way to the top. Elphaba closed the distance between them awkwardly, her breath a loud puff that came all too often. It was too dangerous, she supposed, standing here and smelling her hair and touching her skin and all that. She trailed her fingers along Glinda's upper back before grappling with the zipper. She slid it down to where it ended at the waist and then stepped backwards as though she had been poked.

Glinda turned and she was lovely, all fair-skinned and pink-lipped and eyes clear, wide, so in this respect, Elphaba felt momentarily breathless, as if looking at the girl was (to a ridiculous degree) too much. She shook her head, wanting to dispel the thoughts out her ears. Was this what Boq went through? Is this what had made him so ridiculous in manner? No, it was different, for Boq had been in love with the image, the Gillikinese Galinda who cared only for herself. While Elphaba agreed to it being a lovely image, it did not match the beauty that a thinking Glinda who thought of others presented. She was someone to be in love with.

Elphaba halted on her breath and stepped further backward, legs hitting an armchair, which she promptly fell into. Glinda retreated to the bed, clad only in her under things. She drew one graceful leg up to her corset-clad torso and appeared to be in thought.

"Why do you suppose he lives out here, all alone?"

"I suppose it is just as he said," said Elphaba off-handedly. "He is studying in the Emerald City."

"Well, then why doesn't he live in the Emerald City?"

Startled, Elphaba began to wonder the very same thing. Drauc's explanation had not been one at all. "Perhaps, being from Gillikin, he prefers a rural setting to a city swathed in green."

"Perhaps. I feel I am being infected with your paranoia. I do not like him and shall be eager to leave here."

"Well, I feel the same. Also, having not slept in nearly too long, I feel I should sleep, but will probably stay awake in hopes I can catch him skulking around, trying to glimpse you in your underclothes."

Glinda's cheeks burned crimson. "Oh, you do go on," she said, standing hastily and dressing in her nightgown. There was a small amount of relief that went through Elphaba.

They put out the lights and Elphaba dressed in the dark and then slid into the bed, the sheets smooth and cool. Across the bed, Glinda seemed miles away, as if Elphaba could stretch her arm out as long as it would go and still not be able to prod her spine. Oh, what a lovely spine it was, as well.

Somehow, though, despite their being miles apart, despite the room being perfectly warm and good, Glinda did slide in her sleep into Elphaba's arms. It was awkward and somewhat unexplainable, but Elphaba chalked it up to protection and therefore was okay. She was, of course, rationalizing.

And Glinda, of course, was not really sleeping and was only pretending, but Elphaba did not know this. And when Elphaba stroked her hair and hugged her tighter, she smiled secretly and Elphaba did not see this either.


	3. Costly Inhibitions

The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: Oh, hey. I don't own any Wicked/Wizard of Oz stuff. Poor wimpy Glinda fan.

Author's Notes: Yeah, uh... you may think this is the last chapter. But, to be honest, I still have about 4 chapters left in me. (Which is a silly way of saying that my outline allows for 4 more chapters, and perhaps an epilogue, but most likely not an epilogue) So, there you are. Thanks to all who reviewed, and keep the criticisms coming if you can, because they really help.

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Chapter 3: Costly Inhibitions

The morning was met with both a grumpy Elphaba and a grumpy Glinda, both of whom had gotten little to no sleep the night previous and both of whom were not admitting it. Drauc was annoyingly cheerful at breakfast, so much so that Elphaba was too fed up with him to notice right away the absence of their Horse friend.

"Where is Halivan?" she questioned.

Drauc put down his spoon and wiped his mouth. "Yes, oddest thing. Woke up to find him gone, no trace of him outside. Just took off. No note, either."

Elphaba bristled. "How do you propose he write one, having no hands to write with? And furthermore, why would he leave?"

"Well, it has me curious as well. It is a shame, for I had so looked forward to speaking with him. Never saw one of those, Animals, that is. Well, eat up! I'll load the wagon and we'll set out for civilization soon!" He left the kitchen, heading outside, leaving Elphaba and Glinda to eat their porridge in silence.

"Why would he take off so?" asked Glinda after a few moments.

"He didn't," said Elphaba darkly. "I'm convinced he didn't. My dear, you have been blessed with a naïve gullibility that I envy and find both charming and exasperating. If only I believed everything told of me, my existence would be less fraught with disaster, don't you agree? It must be nice, coming from where you are."

She had suddenly turned bitter and cold, and Glinda, used to her roomie's often jarring changes in moods, simply ignored the hurtful remarks and searched for a clever thing to say. "Huh?" she said.

"Our Master Drauc is lying," explained Elphaba. "Halivan has most likely been sold to the highest bidder, put back into the servitude we rescued him from."

"How awful," cried Glinda.

"Yes. How I wish we did not need Master Drauc to get us out of the fix I got us into in the first place, because I would not mind strangling him." She pushed her porridge away, having eaten nearly none of it.

"Elphie, you really should eat something," said Glinda, ignoring the contemptuous glare her friend sent her as she pushed the porridge back and picked the spoon up. "It won't do to have you pass out in front of the Wizard, you lanky thing. I should be entirely put out, I think."

"Oh, good," said Elphaba, who was more sarcastic when she was upset. "I had suddenly felt as though I had wandered out into the middle of nowhere unchaperoned – lucky enough, though, you are here to be a nuisance. Please, do, spoon-feed me this porridge."

"Don't think I won't," muttered Glinda, annoyed at this point. "It's sad that Halivan has been sold off, but it's not as though I had a thing to do with it, so kindly stop taking it out on me."

Elphaba frowned sourly and did not apologize, but she did stop talking, which Glinda supposed was the closest thing she would get to an apology with Elphie.

Drauc had the wagon all ready and they loaded it with their things. Glinda rode in the shotgun seat and Elphaba sat in the shallow wagon, enduring the blatherings on of Drauc as he tried in vain to elicit some sort of interest out of Glinda, who was charming and polite and as discouraging as one could be without being impolite.

It was a lot of:

"You know, if I may be so bold, you are very beautiful," Drauc would say, taking a crop to his horses (presumably to most adequately display his strength).

Glinda, who knew very well just how beautiful she was and did not need to be told, would say something along the lines of, "Oh, you're so kind, sir," and then make a face that very much suggested that she wanted nothing to do with him.

"I only wish that you might have stayed longer," he would reply with at this point and Glinda would avert her eyes at the scandal of it all. "I apologize if I am over-stepping my bounds, but perhaps I may call on you while you are in the Emerald City?"

And Glinda would say something to the effect of: "I am afraid that is not possible, sir, as we will not be in the Emerald City for long and you must remember, of course, that I am still a student."

Around here, Elphaba would always jump in and save the day (whether her intention was to save the day or just to cut off Drauc, either way she would make a swooping save) and say, "Sir, you almost ran over a rabbit back there; perhaps you had better keep your eyes on the road," or "I do wonder where Halivan has taken off to – do you have any idea, Master Drauc?"

It became clear that Drauc knew that they knew what had become of Halivan and he became quiet after that. This contented both Glinda and Elphaba and they chatted idly the entire ride to the carriage stop, the front of an inn called Moroscoe's Inn, where they had an hour or so until the carriages began to leave. Carriage stops were always milling with people, the drivers of the six or seven third-class carriages on the Yellow Brick Road line, the drivers of the three of four first-class carriages, traveling traders who used the abundance of people at carriage stops to their advantage and sold all sorts of goods. Elphaba pointed out to Glinda their old driver, who scowled when he saw them and shoved his hat down over his eyes.

"Well, Master Drauc," said Glinda, taking his hand as he helped her off the wagon. "It was good of you to go to such lengths of kindness, and we both thank you."

Drauc bowed gallantly at the two girls and then made a great show of taking Glinda's hand and kissing it. Elphaba did not try to hide her scowl. "It was my pleasure, my dear Miss Glinda. And Miss Elphaba. Please, do not hesitate to look me up in the Emerald City."

He took off, then, in his wagon, much to Elphie's relief. She had thought they were going to have trouble ditching him, but he seemed rather in a hurry to get home. She and Glinda headed inside, the stench of stale inn kitchen food a welcome odor to their deprived nostrils. They used their hour to poke around the kitchen for lunch they might take with them, and when it came about time, Glinda took it upon herself to be charming and talk to one of the carriage masters about two tickets. Most of the carriages were pretty full up, but a young couple who heard of their plight and found Glinda so very charming offered to switch onto the carriage that Glinda and Elphaba were banned from, thus freeing up two seats on their carriage.

"Oh, how kind!" cried Glinda, and she and Elphaba paid half-price for new tickets and were off to the Emerald City again. This meant, thankfully, that Elphaba was ready to sleep again and she slept the entire day away. Glinda herself dozed in and out on occasion, but for the most part, tried to stay awake. In an effort to succeed in this task, she made small talk with the other passengers, in the vague notion that if perhaps Elphie decided to pull another one of her Animal rights stunts, the passengers in the new carriage might be sorrier to see them go than the old carriage was.

There were two days to go.

* * *

Elphaba awoke with a start. Glinda shook her and said her name over and over. She opened her eyes blearily and peered up, not making out facial features, just a blur of peach, a funny feathered traveling hat. Then there was blonde hair, eyes of a clear and pretty color, a perfect nose, a perfect mouth and Elphaba smiled, a smile that was half in dream and half awake.

"Oh, it's time to get off the carriage, Elphie," said Glinda. "Come along."

"Yes," said Elphaba. The evening had opted for a chilly demeanor and she had slept with her knees up by her chin, which seemed altogether too uncomfortable now. Glinda was standing over her, shivering, her traveling cloak wrapped tightly around her as she hitched it up higher to cover her lips, pulling the hat down to cover her eyes. Now all that was visible was a cherry red nose that Elphaba found both ridiculous and endearing.

They hurried into the inn, Glinda shouting, "I do hope it doesn't snow!"

"What?"

"I said, I do hope it doesn't snow," she repeated once they were inside the inn, where a fire was ineffectually roaring and not providing heat.

"I don't see why it would," said Elphaba, rubbing her hands together and then rubbing them across Glinda's to warm them. "It isn't snow season."

"It isn't chilly season, either! But I find that the weather seems to think it is."

"Come on. If we order quickly, maybe the soup will still be hot."

It wasn't, but it was warm and rather tasty and they each had a bowl. The tea also was only warm, but they had some of that as well. Glinda's new friends, the couple who had switched carriages for them, came and sat with them. They were a city couple who were on a return journey back home to the Emerald City, although the man joked that he had forgotten what home looked like! Work had sent he and his wife to the Glikkus for a few weeks time to mine for emeralds and the like and they had now been traveling for what felt like years – days of railroad travel from Glikkus to the Railway Square at Shiz, and now the third-class carriage ride from Shiz to the Emerald City.

"One day, we hope to afford first-class travel for this sort of business trip, because I have them often," said the man, Varakoff.

"Lucky for you," said Elphaba. "It could have been worse. You might have been coming from Quadling Country, which is all carriage ride. Or – the Vinkus, where the Yellow Brick Road does not tread."

"Surely it could have been worse," said Varakoff. "But I decline to ever do business in Quadling Country. _We_ do, of course – that is, the business does, as the Kells are ideal for salvage business and the like – but I'd never trust a Quadling as far as I could throw him. Sneaky bastards, the lot of them, so I hear."

"Oh, well, that," said Elphaba dismissively, holding her tea in her hand so as to warm them, although it did little. "That's merely speculation from sources of whom have little or no contact with Quadlings. They're only sneaky to the degree that a Gillikin is frivolous: in a case-by-case distinction."

Varakoff spread his hands plaintively as if to apologize. "I only repeat what I hear. My father and his father before him worked in the same business, and this adage seems to endure – never do business with a Quadling."

"Oh, I've heard that adage," said Elphie. "You forget the part where it says 'Always take advantage of the foolishness of Munchkins'; obviously a saying generated from a forward thinking mind."

"The business world is cutthroat," admitted Varakoff. "I make no apologies for that. If the Munchkins can be taken advantage of in monetary concerns, it is a plight that falls upon them, not the man who makes out with extra money!" He chuckled.

"Survival of the most capable, you mean," said Elphaba. "It's an archaic notion, for who's to say that he who is most capable is also the most deserving of capability? Or that there aren't those who are only considered incapable but only because society insists they remain so?"

"Well!" cried Varakoff's wife with a girlish smile directed toward Glinda. "Talking shop makes me tired."

Glinda smiled, just as relieved that Varakoff's wife had broken the debate, mostly because she knew where it would lead – where it always did, to what's to become of the Animals and what's your viewpoint on it, sir? Elphaba was constantly in recruitment mode, waving people over to her cause, knowing full well that she was likely (as the feeling was in most of Oz) in enemy territory on the issue.

That never stopped her from trying, though.

"Elphaba," said Glinda, slipping a hand into hers under the table. "If we hurry, we can get a good room."

"Nonsense, they're all bad."

"I'm _exhausted_." She pushed against Elphie's side, trying to move her out of the booth.

"Oh, fine. Pleasant talking to you," said Elphaba to the couple, who expressed similar sentiments. Although Glinda felt if Elphaba had said, 'Pleasant talking _at_ you,' it may have been a more accurate statement, but she kept quiet.

As they entered their room, Glinda's head began to ache. Every room looked the same. Every inn along the Yellow Brick Road from Shiz to the Emerald City was exactly the same. It was not as though they became more posh as you got closer or that the architecture or design changed even marginally. It was like seamlessly walking out one door and into another, only to find that you were in the same room you had gotten out of. They'd had a glorious reprieve for one beautiful night where she had not gotten any sleep, and now they were back in another drafty inn that smelled like urine.

She stacked their things on a chair, topping it with her tired-looking hat and then she curled up on the bed, fully clothed, and wept. It came rather suddenly, actually, the urge to cry, because although she admitted a feeling of intense desperation and exhaustion, she could not foresee that the emotion would result in this particular brand of release. So, the tears surprised them both, but probably Elphaba most of all, who was wrestling a book out of one of the parcels and had originally thought that A Study of Durge's Biological Theories was the source of the whimpering.

"Oh!" she said with a crestfallen expression, looking at the curled up form of Glinda on the bed. "What is it?"

There was a soggy "I don't know," and a wail and the blonde girl buried her head into the dingy pillow. She was, to say the least, a wreck,

Elphaba, feeling somewhat amiss, slid onto the bed and lifted Glinda's head so that it nestled into her lap. This was unfamiliar territory for her, this act of comforting, although it seemed altogether that there was no skill involved; indeed, those that needed comfort were more likely to seek it through a willing source than the willing source was to initiate any sort of healing formula. If there was a formula, she did not see it, only that if you stroked her hair she quieted and if you brushed her tears away with your fingers (and then dried said fingers as quick as you could on the bed sheets) she sighed raggedly, and most of all it didn't really matter what you said, so much as you said it in a soothing tone. "It's all right," worked and was what she used, but she was convinced that, "Mustard and cotton," would work just as well, as long as it was said in the voice.

_Insensitive and detached,_ she admonished herself. _There's no need to find amusement in this – despite the fact that a near-temper-tantrum is humorous – you ought to find out what's wrong._

"Er, what's wrong?"

Glinda, whose tears had subsided and was now reduced to sniffling, rubbed her nose against the scratchy material of Elphie's dress. "I wish we had never left," she said, hiccupping.

"Oh." Elphaba's hands stilled in her hair. "Maybe it would have been better had you not come."

"Oh, no, Elphie." She sat up, running the back of her hand across her nose. "I'm glad I did. I don't know that I could have stood being back at Shiz, worrying about you. And the constant questions! Pretending to not know where you are! I couldn't do it. I hate these rooms, though. I hate the carriage rides and I hate the smell of horses and I hate the people." She hiccupped again and then wailed, "And I've probably missed at least two exams by now!"

Elphaba blinked and continued stroking Glinda's hair. "Do they have exams in sorcery? Are they all practical?"

"No," pouted Glinda, sitting up. Elphaba scooted away from the mess of a girl beside her. "I wish they were, but most of them are boring old theory questions, written – oh, it's just like you to make me forget why I was crying!" She did not say this in any state of upset; she appeared, rather, to be in awe of Elphie's ability to do so. She watched Elphaba smirk slightly.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you speak of," said the green girl airily, "and I do wish you'd stop being so dramatic. I am interested in what sort of exams the Future Sorcerers and Sorceresses of Oz have to endure. I say, the questions must be a lark! 'Answer in composition of 250 words or more, how does one go about floating a banana from point A to point B?' I wonder if diagrams are encouraged? Or frowned upon?"

"Elphie," said Glinda, exasperated, tears forgotten.

"It's all subjective, isn't it?" went on Elphaba. "You might write, 'I think really hard and so it happens,' but another person may say, 'Thirty minutes of meditation and a wand twirl will get the job done,' and really, who's to say which one is right?"

"Oh, you." She got up off the bed and shucked off her dress, wanting nothing more than to go to sleep now that she had cried out the little energy she had left.

"Well, thank the Unnamed God that you aren't crying any longer," replied Elphie in cool tones. "Or has the Unnamed God a thing to do with it? Perhaps the power lies in a willingness to stop?"

"Perhaps the power lies in your lap," mused Glinda idly, and when she looked back to gage her roomie's response to what she felt was a rather clever quip, she was pleasantly surprised to find said roomie blushing. And when she stepped out of her underclothes to change into her nightgown and spared another glance backward, she was also pleasantly surprised to find that Elphie was blushing still harder and pointedly averting her eyes.

She, not prone to psychological analysis of any type, did not dwell on why exactly this surprise was so pleasant, but it felt good nonetheless.

That night, she did not need to maneuver herself against and into the arms of Elphaba, because Elphaba opened her arms as she slid into bed and closed them tightly around her once she had snuggled in against her. They exchanged good-nights. It was a night of instant sleep.

* * *

Despite her seemingly cheered up state of the previous night, Glinda was a morose traveling companion the next day, staring sadly out the window with what seemed to be a permanent pout and answering Elphaba's running – and she felt, humorous – commentary with short, concise sentences. She was so very depressing that Elphaba, who was quite tired, didn't think it correct of her to go to sleep, and stayed awake instead, trying to think of clever ways to cheer up Glinda.

All for nothing, apparently:

"Oh, Elphie," said Glinda finally, turning her head from the window and cocking it to the side. "You don't have to cheer me up. You did that last night. Effectively. I just... wish we hadn't come."

Elphaba pursed her lips together and wanted to argue for argument's sake and to convince Glinda that this was a worthwhile adventure, that they'd speak to the Wizard and everything would make sense. But the poor girl just looked so miserable, her hat all worn and filthy, her beautiful, beautiful hair limp and uncurled. This was no place for her. She was no third-class traveler. She had first-class ideals and expectations, a first-class attitude toward adventure that allowed her an inkling of excitement to start off with, but required in the long run a warm, scented bath and a bed of satin sheets. An image Elphie found not only enjoyable, but apt as well.

"It's not much longer," she said quietly. "We'll see the Wizard and go back to Shiz. Two more weeks at most. Perhaps the Wizard will take a liking to us and send us off with first-class tickets. Then it's only a week and another three or so days." Glinda looked up at her, eyes wet and shining and she pushed herself on. "Then we'll go back and enjoy all those mundane activities, like class and homework and tossing Crope and Tibbett in the lake, teasing Nessie. You'll take a long bath. Just a little while longer, Glinda, hold out, please?"

_How like a little girl she is at times_, thought Glinda, leaning her head against the back of the seat and closing her eyes. It was startling sometimes to discover just how hopeful and idyllic Elphaba could be, and it made Glinda wish she could have known her as a child. Sometimes there was a glimpse of it here and there, the young Elphaba untouched by the horrors of the world (although Glinda doubted that Elphie had ever really been _that_ innocent), more often than not when she looked after Nessarose. Glinda would get images, flashes of what a young Elphaba running around in the Quadling Country might have looked like.

"I am holding out," she said finally, opening her eyes. "I am here, aren't I?"

"Well, you don't have much choice because you can't very well just turn around now and go it alone. It is good of you to be a companion, though." It wasn't "thank you," but it was close to it and it made Glinda smile. Every so often, Elphie was pleasant and devoid of her dry, cutting humor and although Glinda couldn't have her that way all the time, it was a nice complement to the normally harsh qualities of her roomie.

"Elphaba," she said quietly. "I..." She what? How did she hope to confess something when she hadn't yet confessed it to herself? A person could not very well go about articulating half-thoughts, half-passions, half-desires – especially when one did not fully understand where these emotions came from. At the moment, they were merely ponderings. Glinda's mind was not used to deep, introspective thinking and so when she tried to dwell on any flitting thoughts further, her mind seemed to protest, as if it to say, 'No, sorry, not built for that sort of thinking; would you like to think about jewelry instead?'

As she stood now, they were fragments, ideas: _Elphie smart stubborn sarcastic annoying green lovely skinny bony tall beautiful protective strong wonderful._ Some of them were exaggerations, she was sure, but this was not something she should submit to half-cocked; that is, it didn't seem correct for her to begin a confession of enormous proportions with, 'Elphie, I've been thinking and I think that you are smart and stubborn and sarcastic and annoying and green...'

"Well?" said Elphaba and Glinda smiled nervously, laughed girlishly.

"Thoughts just flew out of my head!"

Elphaba smiled, somewhat _radiantly_ it seemed to Glinda, and she tapped the girl's forehead. "Oh, for a glimpse of how things work in there."

"That'd be nice. You could explain it to me." She glanced out the window. Evening was approaching and there was a slight chill in the air. "I hope it doesn't get as cold as the other night. Although, this is the last inn on the carriage stop; perhaps, they save the best for last and a warm, really lovely looking room awaits us."

"I think I'll publish a book entitled Traveling with the Eternal Optimist," said Elphaba, mostly to herself. "It would probably sell big in areas of lost cause."

"It would be a wonderful companion to your other book, Being the Eternal Pessimist and Getting Kicked Off Carriages," remarked Glinda, to which Elphaba let out an unladylike snort.

"Who could sell, with a long title like that?"

They chatted about what apt and fitting names the last inn on the carriage line would have, Elphaba going for names like The Last Ditch Resort or The Almost Green Inn that adequately showcased their present position and Glinda, who did not understand the game, was simply coming up with names she liked, such as The Dazzling Boutique of Food and Sleeping or Glinda's Nest. Elphaba pointed out that she would be _severely_ distressed if the latter occurred and they did happen upon an inn called Glinda's Nest. "There aren't many Glindas in all of Oz," she said, saying many things all at once and liking it that way.

When they arrived at the inn (The Tear Drop Inn), the chill had gone out of the air to a large degree, and the two girls exited the carriage, all their belongings under their arms. Glinda straightened her hat, knowing that this was the last inn they'd be staying in and that they would surely find a better hotel of sorts in the Emerald City, she wasn't going to mind too much another night in another ugly room.

"Oh, this is no good," said Elphaba, and Glinda turned to see the girl examining her heavy wool cloak.

"I've been saying that all along," said Glinda airily, examining the cloak as well. "It's really ghastly and the color is too drab."

Elphaba gave her a look and then turned the cloak over. There was a rather large hole in it, somewhere about the shoulder area. Elphie groaned. "Oh, what if it rains? I can't wear this."

"Don't worry. Simply buy another from one of those traveling traders that are always about."

"With what money?"

"Oh." She had a flash of inspiration and smiled. "We'll sell something. One of my nightgowns or something."

Elphaba felt like she had been punched in the gut. How _dare_ Glinda go and be so unselfish? Just when you thought you knew a person, she went and did something like offering to sell one of her nightgowns just so you could have a cloak. It wasn't fair. It seemed only right that while Elphaba was idly admiring Glinda's perfect face, the curve of her flawless figure, that irony should set in and the blonde girl should demonstrate a few of her worst traits so that perhaps Elphaba could step back and say to herself, 'Well, what _were_ you thinking, being in love with that one?'

But no, Glinda was ever the contrarian and chose this exact moment to be perhaps the loveliest specimen of human goodness. Elphie scowled.

"No, it's fine. I—"

"Oh, Elphie, what if it _does_ rain and you get hurt and I have to take care of you, and you know I'm not any good at taking care of _myself_, let alone another person and we lose precious days?"

Elphaba marveled at the powers of persuasion that came from a girl who did not bother to breathe while she was talking. So, they found a trader loitering outside the inn who seemed to deal primarily in leather goods, which Elphaba knew to be very expensive, but she also knew Glinda's nightgowns to be made of the finest Gillikin silk. The trader was in transition, with many made leather goods on his cart (boots, coats, vests, wallets), and a pile of apparently just received hides that had yet to be processed into leather.

"You'll not find better prices on high-quality leather anywhere," said the trader when he heard of their predicament. He held out a long leather coat in dark brown that Elphie admitted was very nice to look at, but hardly practical in the rain. It didn't even have a hood.

"Don't you have any other types?" asked Glinda. "A wool cloak with a hood and perhaps a stylish hem?"

Elphaba rolled her eyes, distracting herself with the pile of hides on the ground while Glinda attempted to negotiate. It was a pity, Elphaba thought, that hides were dyed when they were made into leather. The gray hide at her feet, for example, was a beautiful color. Color of steel. Sort of like Halivan's, she thought, sort of the same color and it even had a perfect white circle on one part, like Halivan had had on his chest. She knelt down and examined it, a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"Good one, isn't it?" said the trader "Got that one just this evening. I can cut you a deal on the hide, if you have a leather maker in mind and want to take it to him. Can't let it go for too cheap, though. It's an Animal hide, you know, thicker than regular animal hides, more valuable."

"Is that so?" asked Elphaba. "Wherever did you get such a lucky find?"

"Ah, I can give you his card, if you please," he said, patting his vest pockets for his wallet. "He's one of my most reliable traders. Has a little cottage somewhere on the Yellow Brick Road, 'hunting shed' they call it." He unearthed the card. "A fellow by the name of Drauc Harbellows. Decent fellow, very young to be so successful." He handed her the card and she accepted it, getting to her feet and looking over the card with mild interest.

Glinda's eyes widened. "Elphie..."

"Yes," said Elphaba, calmly glancing over the rest of the hides. "It is remarkable, isn't it?"

"Oh, it's terrible!" wailed Glinda, hands on her cheeks in horror.

The trader appeared confused. "Will you be making a selection?" he asked.

"No, thank you, sir," said Elphaba. She took Glinda's hand and led her away, into the inn. She rubbed her nose, looking distracted. "Well, let's hope for no rain, then, or I might have to stay behind."

They sat down at a booth in the back and Glinda, who was fighting back tears, noticed the grim look of determination on Elphie's face, the sour and pensive expression, mostly hidden by her long veil of hair. Really, she looked as she always did – contemplative and resolute, as though she had made up her mind about something. About what, Glinda did not know, but as a tear or two slipped down the Gillikin girl's face, she wished that she was not crying alone.

Elphaba, for her part, was not devoid of sympathy. She glanced up from her menu with a mild expression and then silently passed her handkerchief over to Glinda, her expression softening. She bit her lip briefly, sitting up a bit taller. Glinda blew her nose. Elphaba set her menu down. "Now you have done far too much crying in these past two days and that can't be healthy," she said quietly. "Dry your eyes and think strong, good girl. There's nothing that can be done now."

Glinda hiccupped. "Oh, Elphie," she sniffled. "Don't you ever cry? Poor Halivan! He was our friend, Elphie, wasn't he?"

"Oh, he was," said Elphie dismissively. She sighed. "If I had not done anything that day, he may still be alive, I think. Still being worked unfairly, but he'd be alive and perhaps making plans for escape so he could return to his family. That's what I think."

Glinda blew her nose again. "You couldn't have known, though, Elphaba. You mustn't blame yourself."

"I don't," she said frankly. "I'm just saying what I think. I blame Drauc, I think, but it isn't even fair to pin all the blame on him, although I'd like to. I blame Oz, or the social hierarchy within, where to you or me it is inconceivable for such a thing to happen, but to most of Oz's citizens, it's hardly something to even think about." It was clear that she believed this, but Glinda wondered if perhaps the flush that strained Elphaba's cheeks was not, on some level, a manifestation of irrational guilt.

She was quiet all through their dinner of dry biscuits and bland stew and was seemingly too exhausted to speak as they both got ready for bed. Glinda stood by the candlelight, looking out the window into the dry land. Why had this week been such a tornado of emotions? She had expected a long, mundane week with her best friend, filled with the occasional travel amusement and such. She had learned things and grown and perhaps she and Elphie were better friends for it, but it was still a week she wished she could forget.

She slumped over to the bed where Elphaba had her nose buried in a book. "Nudge over," mumbled Glinda and Elphaba complied, letting Glinda climb into bed beside her.

"Do you want the lights out?" asked Elphaba without looking up from her book.

"No." Glinda played with the hem of the worn sheet she was underneath. "We can talk, if you like."

"About?" She turned the page.

"Elphie, please." She said this so quietly and urgently that it made Elphaba look up and set her book down. "I'll never understand why you continually feel as though you need to be strong for me. It's not as though I've ever been strong for you." This was true for the most part; these days, she was very good at deflecting attention off herself around most people, but seemed very often to wear her heart on her sleeve for Elphaba.

"Well, shouldn't someone?" asked Elphaba in a mild tone. "It would hardly do for the two of us to fall to pieces, would it? We'd never get a thing done."

"Oh, really, just throw out your damned airs," said Glinda, annoyed. "As if you're above emotion, or something. I don't think you are."

Elphaba opened her mouth to emit some sort of clever and scathing reply and then closed it. Glinda's cheeks were flushed with anger and sadness and perhaps exhilaration or perhaps she was cold, but either way, Elphaba pondered how one person was able to produce so many emotions at once. She pondered tears and how they came about and why they never came about on her, despite the fact that they were just all-around painful. Oh, she wasn't above emotion, however much she'd like to be. "I'd like to think I am," she said quietly. She shifted a bit in the bed, facing Glinda fully. "That is, I'd like to think I'm above expressing it, but I know I am not." And then, on concept of distraction, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against Glinda's.

And if Glinda had elected to fight off the kiss, Elphaba was not sure if she would have been able to stop anyway, so it was a lucky thing that she did not fight it. Indeed, it is even luckier that she, Glinda, should instead wrap her arms tightly around Elphaba's shoulders and kiss her in return, to pull away and breathe and then kiss her again. All that could not be said, it seemed, was rather easy suddenly; smart-stubborn-sarcastic-annoying-green had a translation, apparently.

Elphaba pushed her back on the bed and kissed her lips and kissed her chin and her neck and behind her ear, eliciting gasps, eliciting her name. And she, who considered herself a terrific thinking individual, was not thinking and that was best. That made it less tense, less fraught with anxiety. It was just slow and wet at times, frenzied and sloppy at times.

It is unclear upon recollection just when they fell asleep, although one of them must have disentangled from the bed to put out the light. It is clear, however, that they both did sleep and that it was a good sleep where Glinda had no nightmares and Elphaba had no fits of being so beleaguered by her thoughts that she was unable to sleep. It was just two girls sleeping huddled together in the middle of the bed, limbs wrapped around each other. There was no pretension of warmth or protection or space; they _wanted_ it that way.

That ended the first week.


	4. The Brief Reprieve in Common Sense

The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: Well, if _only._ But honestly, I don't own any of it.

Author's Notes: A plotless chapter that I felt was a necessary evil in order to get certain plot points established. Sorry it took so long - I had an evening-length play in my playwriting class due and I wanted to give it my full attention, writing-wise. I also had to re-read the entire City of Emeralds section of the book in order to not screw things up. Once again, thank you for the reviews.

* * *

Chapter 4: The Brief Reprieve in Common Sense

"Oh, isn't it lovely!" cried a woman from the front of the carriage as the Emerald City went and sprung up in front of them and most of the carriage seemed to murmur in agreement.

"Are they mad?" wondered Glinda, glaring out the window. What a ridiculous city! Situated on the edge of Gillikin, which was such a beautiful and rural place (and she did admit bias on this particular opinion), the Emerald City was ugly and outrageous, large and sprawling and out of place. Crope and Tibbett had spoken of it in their usual silly ways because most things were a joke with them. 'Oh, Glinda, it's just all green, you see?' Crope would say, and Tibbett might add, 'Hence the name. A city of emeralds, if you like.'

Oh, sure, it was all-over green. To herself, Glinda admitted with a blush that she rather _liked_ green in extraordinary amounts. But still, as they passed through the northern gates, it became irritatingly clear that the Emerald City thought itself to be a lot cleverer than it really was, and Glinda was not amused. "How juvenile, how devoid of irony," she said, mostly to herself. "The pomp, the pretension!" She tried to dredge up some sort of appreciation for the architecture, but she supposed her love of architecture had turned her into some sort of snob, and why not? She had seen the best in the lovely estates in the Pertha Hills and this City of Emeralds just did not compare.

Elphaba, who was hardly listening because she never did, leaned across Glinda to peer out the window herself. "No Animals," she muttered, "not so you can see, anyway. Maybe they have all gone underground."

"Underground?" asked Glinda.

"In hiding," explained Elphaba. Oh, Glinda realized. Like Halivan's family. Elphaba pointed. "Look, the poor—I mean are they the poor? The hungry of Oz? From the failed farms? Or is it just the—the surplus? The expendable human selvage? Look at them, Glinda, this is a real question. The Quadlings, having nothing, looked—more—than these—"

She broke off, seemingly unable to articulate the absurdities of life, the ideas of wealth versus happiness and whether one was an off-shoot of the other or if they were separate entities. Why, on this social pecking order, did the Animals wind up last, despite the fact that there were many more educated and more capable and inclined for and to wealth than any poor person on the streets of the Emerald City? How did it work?

Glinda sat back, wishing to no longer look out the window. "I detest it already," she decided. "Far too full of itself, and not even in a charming way, either. How—"

"Look, a Quadling!" cried Elphaba, grabbing Glinda's wrist and Glinda looked quickly, almost missing a poor dirty woman with red hair. It was awful, looking at it all. Prostitution and pick-pockets and the poor and deformed. Glinda felt sick and drew the curtain on the window, wishing to shut it all out.

Looking down to find Elphaba still holding onto her wrist, Glinda slid her hand down and took hold of Elphie's hand tightly. She smiled at her and rested her head on Elphie's shoulder, pleased that she was not rebuffed. So it was all right for awhile. For awhile, it didn't matter that they hadn't talked about it, and it didn't matter that when Glinda had awoken, Elphaba had already dressed and packed and had been waiting for her downstairs. It didn't matter that she was currently wondering if she had just had a beautiful, terrible dream. For now, it was all right to just hold Elphie's hand and lean on her shoulder as they rode through the ugliest city in all of Oz.

They put a request in at the Palace, but apparently one could not just walk in and say, 'Yes, I wish to see the Wizard,' and the Wizard would be escorted to them. No, there were procedures and paperwork and all things that made Glinda yawn and feel confident that Elphie could take care of it. In short, it would take five days for all this paperwork to be processed.

"Well, I expected that," said Elphaba as they walked down the streets, forgoing carriage fare to find a suitable hotel on foot. "I didn't think the Wizard just lolled around, waiting for university students to come by and ask for him."

Glinda, who didn't really know what a Wizard _did_ all day that would warrant this sort of wait, just nodded. The hotel in front of them, The Palace Hotel, was situated closely to the Palace and was just as ugly and ostentatious as the Palace itself was. She hoped the inside was nicer.

The Palace Hotel was a favorite for most travelers – indeed, as Glinda stood at the desk to get them a room, Elphaba noticed the unfortunately short not-Munchkin from their first carriage ordering a room as well. The urge to give him a good kick in the seat of his pants was nearly unbearable, but she resisted temptation. After all, she hadn't done the right thing like she had meant to; Halivan was no longer being forced to work, of course, but that was because he was dead, a far worse fate to say the least. It made her a little sick to think about, his family waiting and waiting for him to come home and never receiving him.

When Glinda returned to her, a key in hand, Elphaba said, "Glinda, I want to find Halivan's family."

Glinda appeared startled, looking down at the key in her hand in askance, as if it could provide answers to the random, unprovoked situation. "Oh... did he tell you where he lived?"

"No," said Elphaba decisively. "But we know that his family is in the Emerald City and we know that they're in hiding, obviously, being Animals. Don't you feel it's right of us to tell his family what happened to him?"

Glinda shrugged. "I mean, it's terrible, Elphie, but when he never comes back, don't you think they'll naturally _assume_—"

"It could be weeks before they even resign themselves to the assumption that he must be dead. It seems unbearable to me, weeks of wondering, and I maintain that Halivan's family has perhaps been through enough." Justifying herself was a waste of breath, anyway. Either Glinda was coming with her or not, but either way, she felt she had to deliver this message to Halivan's wife and family.

Glinda shook her head. "Elphie, we cannot just traipse about a city that we are unfamiliar with, looking for a family that we've never met. Not only is the idea, frankly, absurd, but we don't have that sort of money. We've enough for a week here and the fare for a return trip back to school – that's all."

And then, somehow, money just happened to fall in Elphaba's lap – or to be more accurate, she looked down and discovered a discarded wallet on the lobby floor of the Palace. She swooped down and picked it up, opening it. That solved the money problem. She examined the identification within and the monogram inscribed on the outside of the leather. It solved other things, too.

Glinda grabbed Elphaba's arm. "Elphie, no."

"Well, suppose we do have the money, Glinda?"

"Elphie, that's _stealing_."

"Hardly. I'd rather think of it as survival of the most capable. After all, he who lost it is clearly incapable, while she who finds it is clearly capable. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, dear. What are you talking about?"

Elphie held the wallet out toward Glinda, showing her the monogram belonging to a J. Varakoff. Glinda furrowed her brow in confusion. "Didn't he say he lived in the Emerald City? What use would he have of a hotel?"

"Dear thing, what use does any married man have of a hotel?"

Glinda, for her part, managed to only look _mildly_ scandalized, her lips forming a perfect 'O'. "Oh, you don't know that for sure."

"First things first." And she took three-fourths of the money supply in the wallet, depositing it into one of her traveling cases. Glinda watched in horror and fascination as the green girl moved to the front desk and requested a pen and a piece of paper, on which she scrawled: "Sir: I've found your wallet. You will most likely find it missing the bulk of its money, as I have taken it. If your wife wonders upon the whereabouts of your money, I do hope you tell her that you lost it during a rendezvous at the Palace Hotel. Terribly sorry about all this. Signed, a Munchkinlander by birth and a Quadling by upbringing." She left it on the desk for their good friend Varakoff to find.

"Well, that isn't the best idea," said Glinda, peeking over her shoulder. "He'll know it's you."

"How do you propose he'll find me in a hotel this big? Furthermore, men who engage in affairs hardly ever have enough stones to hurl."

"Would it not be just a touch easier on your soul if you, instead, don't steal money from him?"

Elphaba frowned. "You ought to know better than to comment on the state of my soul, non-existent as it is."

Glinda did not believe for a minute that Elphie was soulless and she sometimes spent her time contemplating ways to convince Elphie that she did, indeed, possess a soul – but at times like this, it was rather fruitless. _Perhaps_, she thought, _perhaps Elphie does have a soul, and it's just misguided._ That would make sense. It didn't concur with Elphaba's passionate nature on certain subjects for her to be devoid of a soul, so instead her soul must have just been confused – because it honestly did make sense to the green girl that in order for her to put to ease the minds of a few Animals that she had never met, she would need to steal from an innocent man. This didn't strike her as wrong at all, realized Glinda. For Elphie, it was just a means to an end.

"I do hope that 'underground' doesn't really translate quite so literally," said Glinda as she and Elphie crossed the bustling streets. She lifted her skirts primly as she stepped up onto the curb. "I would not want to get lost in some underground tunnel."

Despite herself, Elphaba smiled fondly. "No. It just means out of sight. We'd be better off looking in the worst parts of the city, the most run-down of apartments." She stopped and looked around, trying to refer to a sense of direction that she was not sure she possessed. She then handed Glinda some money. "Here. Go get your hair done in one of those salons." She nodded to a building down the street. "This may take awhile."

"Oh, but I wouldn't dream of letting you go it alone," said Glinda. "Surely you'll want me to accompany you?"

Elphie shook her head, crossing her bony arms across her chest. "I really ought to go it alone. Don't fret. I'll be back before nightfall, even if I haven't found anything. Meet me in the lobby of the Palace Hotel."

Glinda _did_ fret, however. "Elphie, I don't like this. Maybe I really should—"

"I can't have you flitting about, slowing me down and destroying my concentration," replied Elphie, harsher than she intended. Glinda appeared hurt and she softened, uncrossing her arms. "Please, just humor me, my sweet. Go and find a return to those lovely curls of yours, be beautiful. I will not be long."

Glinda shifted from foot to foot. "What if something should happen?"

"You underestimate my resourcefulness," replied Elphaba craftily. "Very well, let me think – if something should happen, then you shall know this because I won't return. And if the unforeseeable occurs (in this case, the unforeseeable being my not returning), then it is up to you to either see the Wizard alone, in which case I sincerely hope that you elect to plead the case of the Animals. Or you can return to Shiz, unscathed. Without me."

"Oh, Elphie, that's terrible!" huffed Glinda. "Why say such a thing? Now you've only frightened me!"

"You _asked_," said Elphaba, snickering. "There's reasoning behind my labeling it 'the unforeseeable' – it won't happen. I'm not entering a battlefield, my dear, I am merely scoping out the city, if you understand my meaning."

Glinda pouted, a clever tactic she had devised over many years in order to get what she wanted. She knew Elphie was immune to its influence, though, and really only used it as a formality. "Well, if you must," she said quietly. "Although, I don't like it, but praise the person whoever manages to change _your_ mind on anything."

Elphaba formulated what was perhaps an actual, sincere smile. "I won't be long," she said, turning.

"Wait," said Glinda cautiously, and when Elphie turned back around, she launched herself into the green girl's arms, rising up on her toes to properly hug her. "Should this be the last time I see you..." she explained helplessly, closing her eyes tightly.

"It won't," replied Elphie simply. "I'd hate to leave behind a girl with such a flair for the dramatic." Glinda did not reply, only wrapped her arms tighter about Elphie's neck and sighed contentedly. "All right," she said, patting Glinda's back gently. "Unhand me and let me go at it."

With a sigh and a blush, Glinda did just that, stepping away and lowering herself to her regular height, hands clasped behind her back. Elphaba offered a short little wave and then she turned around and was off down the city streets, a thin and lanky stick of green weaving in and out of the crowds of people. Glinda watched her go until she seemed to disappear around a corner or was perhaps just simply engulfed by the sheer volume of the throng of people.

She really sincerely hoped that Elphie did make it back alive and with all her limbs intact because, honestly, she hated to think of only getting to kiss the girl that one night and, worse, having to wonder about the whys and wherefores of said kissing for the rest of her days.

Glinda sighed, loud and dramatic, and then spun on her heel and headed for the hair salon.

* * *

There was one thing Elphaba could never be accused of, and that was being stupid. She was always right, after all, about everything, and she had been right to send Glinda into the salon instead of letting her follow along. It was a relaxing day for the Gillikin girl, where her hair was properly washed and curled. She felt blissful all afternoon, lying back in her chair as she was tended to, listening to the inane chattering of the salon girls and wondering if she was perhaps experiencing a unique, non-subjective glimpse at what a conversation between she and Pfannee or Shenshen or Milla must have sounded like once upon a time.

"He was dreadful," one girl was saying above Glinda's head. "Not the least bit handsome, and so I said 'Well, why not suck it up, for he's quite rich?' but it wasn't worth it, not in the least."

"He wasn't even that rich," replied one girl languidly. She was not even working; rather she was stretched out on the chair beside Glinda, and had been in that position all afternoon. "I mean, by comparison, he wasn't very rich. You find richer men up north, to be sure, and that's where I hope to find my husband – north."

"Out of the city, then?"

"Of course out of the city. City men aren't impressive, unless they hold a Palace job or some such career."

"But they do hold a certain sophistication, wouldn't you agree? A gift from a city man is certainly a more impressive gift than any other sort. And – they're charming. Sort of polished, I would say."

"Oh, sure. But what's charming in the long run if it's charm without finance?"

The girl laughed. "Oh, well they give you that feeling, I suppose. That feeling that you just assume is love? City men, I would say, are the finest at that – you're probably not really _in_ love, of course, but they really do make you feel like it. And you look it. This girl, for example," and she tapped Glinda's scalp gently, "has had a blissful smile on her face since she swept in here earlier, and I think we've both attributed it to love, haven't we?"

Glinda's eyes snapped open, surprised to suddenly be included in the conversation she was listening in on. "Oh, me?"

Both girls laughed. "'Oh, me?' she says!" cried the one in the chair. "You're right about her, I think. She's had that face all day. It probably is love."

"Love?" Glinda blinked, looking in the mirror in front of her. She looked back to her old self, the perfect blonde ringlets, the pale, flawless complexion with the faintest of blushes – and yes, she did have the remnants of a ridiculous smile, her eyes all (and she severely loathed being so cliché) sparkling and such. "Yes," she murmured quietly, studying her features. "Love. I suppose that's what this is."

As the evening slid into night, Glinda crossed the street and felt lovely as she headed to the Palace Hotel. She'd meet Elphie and Elphie would be okay and they would finish this week. It was starting to feel more and more like a vacation. If the waiting list to see the Wizard was really as long as it seemed, they were in for a few days of waiting and frankly, this made Glinda rather glad. It seemed only right that she should be able to relax for a week after her long week of suffering.

As she stepped into the hotel, there was a loud crack and a blinding flash of light, and she turned, looking out the glass doors from inside the hotel. It was pouring rather suddenly, thundering and lightning, too. Glinda marveled at her luck. A second later and she would have been caught in the downpour, her hair ruined once again. She patted her curls affectionately, looking around for Elphaba.

But Elphaba wasn't in the lobby, and she certainly couldn't be in their room because she, Glinda, still had the key. She bit her lip and looked out the window, pacing the large emerald lobby. In all her worrying about what could possibly become of Elphie in her afternoon away, she hadn't even considered what might happen if a rainstorm intervened. Now, she was worrying, though, and it was occurring to her that no, they had not managed to secure a replacement cloak for Elphie.

Glinda stood at the door, looking out into the suddenly _very_ dark sky and the rain that fell in sheets and hit the pavement and bounced up, joining itself. Elphaba had taken her old cloak, she knew, but it did have that large hole in the shoulder. She didn't know what Elphie's thing with water was, but she just knew that it was _thing_ and that it was painful. She couldn't, for the life of her, think of really what it was that _happened_ when Elphaba came into contact with water, but she assumed it wasn't pretty. A grotesque picture entered her head of Elphie hobbling back to her with a missing shoulder, perhaps her arm becoming disconnected as a result and turning the green girl into a somewhat Nessarose-looking thing, at least on one side. She shuddered.

But what could she do? She didn't have the faintest idea of where Elphaba might be. So she waited. She sat down by the door and waited and when she was approached with, "Is there anything I can do for you, miss?" or such, she would respond curtly, "I am waiting for a friend, thank you," and she never took her eyes off the door, praying that Elphaba would soon stride through it, completely dry and shouting, 'I was lucky enough to find a large bubble that floated me over here and kept me safe from the rain!' or something like that.

The next best thing, though, was when the door opened and a hooded figure with an umbrella entered. She closed the umbrella and lowered her hood and her green face was paler than usual and her mouth was set in a grim, angry line, but she was _fine_, thank Lurline, and she was _alive_.

It was a blur of curly blonde hair and a muffled squeal and Elphaba felt tackled, pushed against the door she had just entered from. Glinda was crying, "Oh, you foosh grr!" which Elphaba translated into meaning, "Oh, you foolish girl!" with her head all buried against Elphaba's cloak. She stood stiff and annoyed, relieved to see her best friend of course, but annoyed nonetheless and eager to get out of her wet cloak.

"All right," she said. "Yes, I'm back, and help me remove this cloak. I just had the rain attacking me; not you, too."

Glinda pulled back, smiling, and helped Elphaba out of her cloak, folding up the wet material and carrying it under her arm. She faltered when Elphie grimaced a bit at the removal, but everything was all right, she was sure of that. Everything was all right.

"Oh, but where did you find this umbrella?" asked Glinda and they entered the lift to take them to the eleventh floor, where their room was.

"I bought it, as soon as the rain started. Lucky thing. It looked like rain, I thought, so I put my cloak on, and then as soon as it started, a vendor of sorts just rather appeared before me. If I wasn't in such dire need of it, I wouldn't have purchased it, for umbrella vendors that appear out of thin air do rather unnerve me."

Glinda grumbled. "This is precisely why I should have accompanied you."

Elphaba smiled tightly. "Oh, and you would have performed a spell to get rid of the rain? I had no idea your powers had advanced so far."

"Well, if I was with you, at least then I wouldn't have had to worry about whether you were alive or dead."

"How very kind," said Elphaba dryly, striding quickly in front of Glinda as they stepped off the lift. "But I assure you that you did not need to worry. I said I would not leave a dramatic girl such as yourself for very long, and I meant that."

They unlocked the door to their room and Elphaba narrowed her eyes, immediately noticing two things as wrong – first, it was far too _green_, which she was sure she had expected, but still – and second, there was, yet again, only one bed.

"I hope you don't mind," said Glinda as they set their things on top of the bed, which was full-sized one. "But it was cheaper this way and besides, there's a chaise over there for one of us to sleep on."

"You mean me," replied Elphaba and looked around the room. For "cheap," it was very pretty, if you ignored the excessive amounts of green. The furniture was very pretty and the room was rather spacious, although probably not as large as their room back at Shiz, it was certainly larger than the rooms they were used to sleeping in lately. There was the bed and chaise lounge, a nightstand, and a small table with two chairs. Most of all, it was very clean, as was the adjoining bathroom. "Turn around," she said, gesticulating that she wished to change out of her clothes.

"I mean whoever," said Glinda dismissively and turned around, studying the bedspread in front of her. Was this ridiculous? It was. If there was one thing Glinda disliked, it was situations of discomfort and she felt as though if things did not change or common sense did not intervene, she and Elphaba would be stuck in a perpetual state of discomfort, and this was no good. She turned with a sigh, prepared to confront Elphaba no matter _what_ she was wearing, when something caught her eye that made her frown. "Elphaba."

The green girl clasped her left hand defensively over her right shoulder, scowling. "It's all right. Turn around; I'm not finished."

"Elphaba, what happened? It looks terrible."

"It isn't. Before I found the umbrella vendor, there was a short period of journey without umbrella, and the hole in my cloak made its presence rather maddening." She lifted her hand to reveal the ugly blisters adorning one emerald shoulder and Glinda flinched. Defensive, Elphaba put her hand back down. "Turn around, please." She stood in her underclothes and Glinda idly found the stark white on green contrast rather mesmerizing, but she dutifully turned around.

"You need to put something on that or else you may get sick," she offered quietly.

"Stupid girl. Of _course_ I plan on putting something on it."

"Well... I'm going to take a bath," she said suddenly and decisively. "And you can tell me all about your day."

Elphaba watched her exit into the bathroom and listened as the water in the bath began to run. "How novel," she murmured. "Let me sort my thoughts."

"What?" called Glinda from the bathroom.

"Nothing," she called back. She rubbed oil on her shoulder to clean it, but there wasn't much else she could do besides wrapping her handkerchief around and tying it under her arm. She dressed in her nightgown and Glinda sounded as though she were splashing around in there. Elphaba rolled her eyes. _I wouldn't put it past her, I think_.

"Elphie! Tell me about your day!"

She paced toward the bathroom door and sat down on the floor next to it. "Well, as you might have guessed, I did not find Halivan's family today. Moreover, I don't even think that I came close to finding them, but I did get a glimpse of the southern parts of the Emerald City. Ghastly. You wouldn't have been able to handle it, I say."

"I what?"

"Never mind. Anyway, _that's_ where the bulk of the starving and poor are, and they're the funniest little people. First I asked them if they knew anything about Animals, you know, where an Animal might go if he was going underground. They pretended as if they were ignorant on the entire subject! 'Animals?' they said. 'You mean like pets?' 'No,' I said, 'Animals. You know the type, of the talking and thinking variety.' So, an entire afternoon of that and it suddenly occurred to me, well, perhaps they thought I was with the law or something?"

"With the who?"

"With the _law_, Glinda, the _law._"

"Oh, hell, just come in here, Elphie. I can hardly a hear a word of it."

"No, I'll stay," said Elphaba, doing a wonderful job of keeping the fear out of her tone. "Here, I'll open the door more." She did so. "Nevertheless, I began to think that if the law is banning Animals from most establishments, well, then perhaps there were law enforcers _always_ coming around and asking whether people know where the Animals are hiding. So, maybe these people are _protecting_ the Animals, see?"

"It sounds like something _you_ would do, if you lived here," called Glinda.

"Precisely. So I said to the next one, 'I'm not with the law or anything, of course, I've a _friend_ who's an Animal and I'm wondering where to find him.' But they didn't truly go for that one, either."

"Well," replied Glinda, "if you _were_ with the law, that would be a clever tactic, of claiming that you weren't with the law and that you had a friend who was an Animal. Will you come in here? I detest talking to someone without a face."

"I'll sit here. Hurry up your bath and you can talk to my face all you want. At any rate, I made no dent in the search for Halivan's family, but I did discover an inkling of what the average person thinks of the Wizard – or at least the _poor_, average person. They don't think very much of him, Glinda."

"Why should they? They're poor. I've found that poor people very rarely think highly of _anyone_ with more money than them. I forgot a nightgown. Bring one in here, please?"

"Oh, fine," grumbled Elphie, getting to her feet and walking to the bed. She rifled through their things, grabbing the first nightgown she saw. She hung it on the inside of the slightly ajar bathroom door.

"No, in here. Some servant you'd be, with that sort of service."

Elphaba furrowed her brow and carried the nightgown into the bathroom. "I don't think I ever professed an interest in being a servant, so thank you." She placed the nightgown on the sink, across from the bath. She didn't look. She'd walked in on Glinda in the bath once at school, but there had been a superfluous amount of bubbles at the time, and this was different.

"Elphie, honestly," said Glinda forthrightly. "Are you frightened of me or something?"

"No, you fool. It's the water." This was really not a lie.

"Oh. What is your thing with water, anyway? I understand that it's a problem, but I don't know the _thing_..."

"I suppose the word for it is allergic," said Elphie with a shrug, studying the porcelain sink. "I just always have been."

"How do you stay clean, though? And you are, for you always smell so good—" She grimaced at her own words and Elphaba chuckled lightly, most likely out of an intense uncomfortable pressure that caused one to laugh as though it would alleviate the discomfort, which it never did.

"Nevertheless," she said, starting for the door.

"Wait, Elphie." She heard her stand up from the bath and the sound of the water draining, the scuffle of a towel which Elphaba _hoped_ she was wrapping around herself. "Have you forgotten that you _did_ kiss me, then?"

Oh, well there it _was_, not even out of the lips of someone a little more subtle. She supposed it must have looked comical from an unbiased third party, what with her standing agape staring at the door and Glinda (probably, although she had no way of knowing this) behind her with her hands on her hips; certainly to Elphaba herself, there was no comedy in it and she fought, fought hard to put into words what she did not want to say and what she was sure she should not be allowed to say.

She didn't want to talk about it for many reasons, the most enduring of which was that there wasn't a whole lot to say; that is, there wasn't a reason for it that she could articulate. The reasons, she rationalized, were two-fold – there was the reasoning for kissing her and there was the reason for wanting to kiss her. The latter was, obviously, that she had a certain fondness for Glinda that may or may not be translated into being "in love with Glinda" (loath as she was to admit it), but her reasons for initiating the Incident of Terrible Proportions last night, she decided, was entirely to distract herself. And that was all there was to it. She hadn't been thinking and she didn't like that Glinda was the only person or entity that could reduce her to non-thinking.

At any rate, she felt she had to answer for no other reason than it was rude not to, so she said very simply and very eloquently, "No, I have not forgotten."

"Well, thank heavens," replied Glinda casually. "I was beginning to think I had imagined it up."

"No, not nearly. I wonder, is dinner included in the hotel package or do we have to pay extra?" She exited the bathroom, breathing irregularly. She heard Glinda sigh, she dressed, she exited right behind her.

"It's included. We can have it downstairs or it can be brought up here. It's one of those tiktok machine servants; you tell it what you want and it brings it up. Rather unnerving if you want to know the truth. Elphie—"

"We'll eat downstairs, then," decided Elphie. "I don't know that I trust something too much like Morrible's Grommetik. Oh, we'd have to get dressed, then. Dear me-"

"Oh, really, Elphie – why be so ridiculous?" Startled, Elphaba turned and regarded her irate roomie who _did_ indeed have her hands on her hips in that very not-comical way. She glared. "I mean, you seem to protest to talking about it, so I wonder if perhaps that implies that you didn't _enjoy_ it, in which case..." She trailed off and appeared very flushed from the exertion of speaking so frankly. Elphaba frowned.

"That isn't the case."

"Well, what _is _the case?" She sunk down on the bed and closed her eyes momentarily. "Elphaba, I feel as though we've had a long week that's done nothing but engender fruitless introspection, and I confess to... to not _liking_ it very much." She looked up, a very picture of reluctant intellect, at Elphaba.

Peculiar looking girl was she, the green skin notwithstanding; that was a tired topic. It was the hawk-like features, the sharp chin and nose, the dark, bottomless eyes. They were expressionless, maybe, dark and blank. Often she was mean, often she was compassionate, but her eyes never reflected it. The hair, long and lovely, and black to a startling degree. It was heavy, weighed down her pointed head so much that she seemed to perpetually be hanging it. There was a beauty, however, that came out of her intelligence, her passion, her ambiguous nature. She, Glinda, had fallen in love with mystery.

Elphaba was strangely silent as she sat next to Glinda on the bed. This was incorrect, for she rarely passed up a chance to speak and educate the world on her many opinions. So Glinda prompted her, she said, "Say something, Elphie."

So Elphie said, "Who are we, two university girls, to pretend to know what a week of unrelated-yet-interconnected events mean for the rest of life as we know it? Isn't that what religion is about, finding a why and how of life's method of living? Well, I don't believe in anything, Glinda, and neither do you. Does that make us inconsequential? Because we don't believe anything, does that mean that we are not believed either? And if that's true, well, then here's the real question – are our actions invisible? Do we cease existence? There are studies that ensure that everyone matters, as long as there is belief. Well, then, I ask you, smart, dear girl – do we really matter?"

Glinda did not understand her. She rarely did. Elphaba was a strange girl with thoughts bigger than she ought to be allowed. But she was real, she existed, Glinda was sure of it. So she wrapped her arms around Elphaba's neck, scooted closer on the bed. Their hips touched and she said, "But Elphaba, I _love_ you."

Elphie nodded, her forehead furrowed in thought. She was no stranger to repression, to denial, and it seemed useless to her, suddenly, to want to trace the lineage of every action, every event, and _for what_? So that she could sit back with a self-satisfied smile and commend herself on being a thorough Thinker? What if it were simpler than that? "Then, some things _do_ matter, I suppose," she said, and she leaned forward and bestowed a small, lovely kiss upon Glinda's lips.

It was funny, the things you didn't notice until you were up-close, like how she had never noticed how _natural_ the green skin seemed, or how long Elphie's eyelashes really were, or the incongruous nature of Elphie's nose and how it did not get in the way, at all. "Oh!" said Glinda, feeling faint. She smiled. She pressed her lips again against lips that were willing, that she hoped would _always_ be willing. That was perfect. Being in love with Elphaba was strange, like looking at the world with your head down, like staring at a large painting up close and not being able to step back and look at the whole thing. It was comforting. And scary as hell.

* * *

The Palace was still making a big to-do about their wanting to see the Wizard. Elphaba had said, annoyed, that they were students of Madame Morrible's the other day, and that had seemed to bump their waiting time up from "never" to "in five days or so." There were ridiculous forms that they had to come in and fill out every day, perhaps to make sure that they were serious about this visit and not just coming in on a whim. More likely, of course, was to ward off assassination attempts, which seemed sensible.

"Although," said Elphie as they sat on the floor of the Palace waiting room, filling out the form, "what conscious assassin would answer 'Nature of visit?' with 'To kill the Wonderful Wizard of Oz'?"

"Elphie, keep your voice down," hissed Glinda urgently, looking around the crowded waiting room. It was too full for Elphie to be heard, thankfully, but still. Elphie made a _tsk_ing sound and went back to her form. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her long, bony torso crooked into an awkward arc as she studied the paperwork diligently. There were not enough chairs for them to be able to sit. The waiting room was full to the brim with people, it seemed, from all walks of life. Glinda saw many of a familiar situation – a poor-looking woman with a gaggle of dirty children that she either, in some cases, could not control and could only watch helplessly as they ran around the room and tormented other people, or in other cases, she clutched them tightly to her body, staring out at the strangers with large, empty eyes. There were also many cases of what Glinda began to call the Young, Up and Coming Lad – men, not too much older than herself and probably fresh out of school, intense in their frank good looks and frank hopefulness. They paced the waiting room anxiously, hair on end. Another common sight was that of the Disgruntled Worker – dirty-looking men who had been waiting so long they had claimed most of the chairs. They sat with sour expressions, jiggling their legs in impatience.

Then there was them, of course. The blonde girl and the green girl, unusual in nature, but what Glinda considered the sanest of the bunch. Two girls who had woken up in the morning and had breakfast in the Palace Hotel, who were treating their foray into the Emerald City as a vacation more than a mission, now that they knew they would have to wait to see the Wizard. In her head, privately, Glinda was considering it a Romantic Excursion of sorts. This she would never admit to Elphie for fear of being laughed at, but that's what she thought of it all the same. Their trip to the Palace to check up on their status on the waiting list (around two-hundred somewhere and steadily rising as forms were processed and thrown out) had been more of an afterthought than anything, a reprieve to the languid afternoon of sitting around with no words passed between them, only kisses of a hurried, fevered nature, an idea that they would perhaps never get out of bed.

It was on Elphie's suggestion, upon hitting mid-afternoon that they really ought to visit the Palace and investigate how this whole getting-into-see-the-Wizard thing was coming along before evening fell. Glinda was reluctant, drunk on Elphie's kisses, lightheaded and content to spend the day snuggled in the clean, crisp emerald sheets of their bed. She had been bribed. There had been promises of shopping.

And now they had been sitting in the waiting room for hours and Glinda sighed, wondering when _that_ promise would come to fruition. Noticing her restlessness, Elphie looked up from the form, her expression still puckered in thought. It faded away to an affectionate look and she said, "Suppose I meet you in one of those shops when I'm finished?"

"Oh," said Glinda, shifting a bit. "I don't mind waiting."

"You don't mind? You resemble a child who has not yet received Mother's promised ice-cream. Take the money and buy yourself a scarf or some such." She handed her money. It was odd, spending stolen money, but she didn't think on it too much. Elphie made it seem as if it was okay, and she was okay with that.

"Well, all _right_. But if you take too long, I'll—"

"You'll pout and be cold to me for a full ten minutes, I'd wager. I won't take too long."

She left the Palace, wishing not for the first time that Elphie knew her a little _less._

The Palace square was an odd place – the stately, ostentatious disposition of the Palace itself juxtaposed with the lovely, virtually _economical_ nature of the surrounding establishments. The Palace Hotel, for example, was a grand, ugly place that hardly dented one's pockets. The shops in the square, also, sold quality items of almost no cost. Was this life directly under the Wizard? No wonder he was so Wonderful. She had voiced her exhilarated amazement to Elphie and had received a cynical, radical response about a Radius Theory where any good ruler would keep the economy peaceable in areas of extreme rule, whilst keeping a rigid grip and careless economical eye on areas further away. "It makes him _seem_ like a good ruler," she concluded, and that was all she would say on the matter. Elphaba was not overly impressed with the Wizard and Glinda only hoped that she curbed her apparent disdain for him at their meeting. It was her experience that one was more likely to get what they wanted out of reverence, false or otherwise.

At any rate, Elphaba's definition of "long" was different, Glinda supposed, than the traditional definition of it. She must have shopped for a full hour, flitting into boutique after boutique. She'd bought Elphie a new cloak and had been tempted to buy her a really _nice_ one, but practicality intervened and said that she really ought to buy one that Elphie would _wear_, so it was a drab black one. Even the clerk seemed to think it was ugly, and Glinda made a big show of saying "It's for a friend of mine."

She also bought herself a new nightdress, recognizing the ridiculousness of only having packed _three_, and then, remembering what Elphaba had proposed, she bought a few scarves. It was certainly more than Elphaba had probably assumed she would buy, but she felt that when a girl made another girl wait for nearly an hour's time, the first girl had no right to be upset about the second girl's spending habits.

Evening, sooner or later, _did_ fall and Glinda browsed around, moping. She stood at the back of the hat shop and listlessly tried on another hat. The full-length window beside her faced out into the back of the square, where the shops ended and an inappropriate little patch of grass was the division between commerce and faith, a stone circle on which a unionist chapel lolled about, a dark representation of diminished belief. It was dark. Glinda wondered if it was ever used, unable to drum up the name of the Saint it was named for. In opposition to her thoughts, a figure stepped out of the side of it, a dark figure that stalked across the circle, coming closer to the patch of grass. A moment later, another figure came out, too, and appeared to glance at the first before taking off in an opposite direction.

As the first figure came closer, its thin contours became clearer and Glinda noticed that it was Elphaba, her arms swinging at her sides as she stepped over the grass and moved to the side, presumably to walk through an alley and come into the square. Now _what_, Glinda wondered, her hat falling off her head, was Elphaba of all people doing in a unionist chapel? Is that what had taken her so long? And who had she been with?

Or perhaps she hadn't been with them at all; perhaps they had both been in there to pray. But Elphaba didn't pray, Glinda knew, and had almost an unspoken aversion to chapels in general. So why—

The bell above the door sounded an entrance and Elphaba strode into the shop, breathless, eyes darting about. Upon noticing Glinda, she joined her, saying, "I should have known you'd buy out the entire city; sorry for taking so long."

"Oh, well, it's... Where were you?"

"Let's pay for these things and have dinner, then, and I'll tell you all about the excruciatingly dull procedures of The Palace Process. This is pretty, by the way," she said, pointing to one of the scarves.

"Have you been at the Palace all this time?" asked Glinda as they winded their way through the crowded streets. It was dark, the warm glow of candlelight filtering out of the windows as they walked past, illuminating Elphie's features, giving her a look more effulgent than green. She put one arm around Glinda's shoulders.

"No, not this whole time. I have an idea of where we might look for Halivan's family, if you care to accompany me tomorrow."

"Oh, am I no longer being relegated to the stay-at-home-and-worry-while-the-hero-flits-off-on-adventure type? Do you really wish me to accompany you?"

Elphaba pretended to think for a moment. "On second thought, perhaps you had better stay. I don't know that I could endure all the terrible sarcasm. It's like having my own medicine used against me, to mix a few metaphors."

Had she been asked beforehand where the finest place to fall in love and enjoy a vacation was, Glinda could not see herself having said, "The Emerald City, of course," but, nonetheless, it is what happened. It was silly and a bit embarrassing, she realized, how trite it all was, but she could hardly bring herself to care. A long stretch away from school and duties, with no real immediate responsibilities except for a meeting with the Wizard that was days away – well, Glinda reasoned, it could be worse.

The sky was pitch-black that night and the city was loud, shouting. The poor suffered and froze, their anguish blackened the night. The comfortable rooms in the Palace Hotel were warm, but that was all that could be said. At night, there was no trace of anything emerald, and it all became black.


	5. The Crusade Through the Doldrums

The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: No, of course not, it's all Maguire's and Baum's and good for them, too.

Author's Notes: I cannot stress enough how thankful I am for the support and the reviews and the comments – I apologize for leaving this for so long, but I never had any intention of abandoning it before it was finished (about two more chapters to go). The next chapter should come out a lot quicker, I should think. Or – here's hoping. Anyway, thanks again.

* * *

Chapter 5: The Crusade Through the Doldrums

"Oh." The figure lying in bed may have formerly been mistaken for a shapeless lump, but as a head poked out, blonde ringlets swinging, the shape was identified as Glinda, who promptly returned her head to the confines of the emerald sheets and said, "It would be good of you to close those curtains, you know, and let a person secure at least a few hours of sleep."

"Oh, but you had more than a few hours of sleep last night," said Elphaba, who was single-handedly identified as the perpetrator of Curtain Opening. She was awake and dressed in a starchy frock of a blue, almost black, color.

"I certainly hope you recant your statement on that," said Glinda grumpily, her voice muffled by the sheets she was burrowed underneath, "for you know that I couldn't sleep a wink with all that kicking you did."

An eyebrow rose. "I don't kick."

"Someone in the bed was kicking," said Glinda decisively, "and I can't very well go about kicking myself, can I?"

"Oh, Glinda," said Elphaba, shaking her head. "If anyone could, I daresay it would be you."

"I cannot, and certainly not for lack of trying, understand why we need to wake up so _early_." Glinda poked her head out once again and peered at the sunlight, which suddenly appeared iniquitous in nature. She was rather willing to bet that, although the sunlight was presenting itself rather intensely, it hadn't been doing so for long. That is, she felt that it had probably not risen very long ago, and thusly a few more hours of sleep were sufficient for normal persons.

Elphaba, of course, did not represent anyone within the bracketing together of normal persons.

"It's good to get an early start," said Elphaba, "for I don't know how long this will take us."

"How long _what_ will take us?" grumbled Glinda, who finally emerged fully from under the covers and was presently working on stretching herself into a comfortable bodily state so that she could remove herself from the bed.

"Finding Halivan's family. Were you not listening when I told you I had received a lucky tip?" She watched with interest as Glinda stretched her arms above her head, the shift of the material of her new nightgown a rather fascinating sight against her legs.

"Oh, yes, I remember," said Glinda. "Stop gawping at me, you lecher." She had one eye open. Elphaba scowled. "You never said just from whom you received this lucky tip," Glinda went on.

"No, I did not, and I wasn't gawping." She gawped some more, purely on principle of contrariness. "It was someone who is just as concerned about the Animal situation as I am."

"Was it an Animal?"

"I cannot know that, for he was wearing a cloak."

"A cloak?" cried Glinda, now from the bathroom where she was changing. "You engage in secret rendezvous-es with _cloaked_ gentlemen? What's the plural form of 'rendezvous'?"

"Amusingly, it's 'rendezvous'. And I would not call it such; it was neither secret nor really a rendezvous, and if I may be frank – he wasn't so much of a gentleman, either."

"Oh, was this while you were at the chapel?" called Glinda from the bathroom, and lucky, too, for Elphaba felt that she did a poor job of disguising her surprise.

"Yes, at the chapel," she said. It was probably, she was suddenly realizing, never a good idea to underestimate Glinda.

"Well, who is he? You are assuming I will believe that you both ended up in the chapel and you said, 'Where would I go about finding an Animal family in hiding?' and he said, 'Oh, I know that,' and that was the end of the conversation?"

Elphaba smiled slightly. "I never assume to pinpoint your beliefs."

"Good."

"While I was filling out the forms at the Palace, a vacancy in the seats sort of opened up and I took it, seating myself next to this—er, _cloaked gentleman_, as you call him. He, apparently, was going to see the Wizard the next day, and he had a speech prepared, written on paper and he was going over it."

Glinda returned from the bathroom, dressed and clean, and she went about making the bed, which Elphaba found funny, considering how Glinda had not even known _how_ to make a bed when she first arrived at Shiz.

"Oh, did you see his hands? Or—were they hooves or paws or something?"

"No, those were cloaked, too."

"Oh."

"At any rate, I did sort of glance at the speech – for my safety, mind you, being seated next to an ominous man in a cloak. I was wondering whether I ought to fear for my life, you see, expecting to see 'The Systematic Execution of Everyone in Oz' emblazoned across the top. What I did see, however, was a dissertation addressing such sentences as 'the unification of Oz through an amputation of the Animal Banns,' which I find grotesquely verbose, don't you?"

"Indeed," said Glinda, wrinkling her nose. "What a choice of words, 'amputation'. I suppose you decided he was your sort of person, didn't you?"

"I realized we might have a bit in common, yes. So, naturally, when he got up to leave, I followed him to—"

"The chapel."

"Yes, the chapel," said Elphie, annoyed. "He was convening with another cloaked figure and so I waited until he had left before I went in. He listened to all I had to say, all of it, and then he gave me the address of a boarding establishment in the city, where many Animals are living."

"And how did he know that you were… er, for the cause?" asked Glinda. "That is, what did he do to ensure that you were not just a law official undercover? Did you sign your name in blood?"

"Oh, the world knows that I don't bleed, so that is impossible," replied Elphie. "No, but we did speak for a long time. I told him all my feelings and ideas on Animals and I told him of the work Dr. Dillamond had been doing. I'm sure he is very good at screening the helpful from the unhelpful, you know, when he is recruiting and whatnot."

"Recruiting?" cried Glinda, imagining Elphie marching in a line with a sword thrown over her shoulder.

"It's some sort of… group of abolitionists and liberationists or what-have-you whose main concern, at the present, seems to be attempting to secure more rights for Animals, whether it be by force or peacefully."

"Attempting to _secure_?" asked Glinda. She locked the door behind them as they left the room. "Elphie, do you know what this sounds like? It sounds like terrorism."

"Oh, what do you know of terrorism?" retorted Elphaba.

"Well, knowing the definition is half the battle," said Glinda thoughtfully. "I just really don't think it's terribly _safe_—"

Elphaba stopped shortly and looked at her, appearing to teeter at the precipice of mild annoyance and genuine fondness. In a rare move, she opted for the latter somewhat. "Glinda," she said quietly, her eyes harsh pictures of soil. "In the event that I should get myself into an unsafe position, would I choose to bring you along with me?" She cupped Glinda's face between her hands and kissed her once, twice. "It falls upon me, I should think, to ensure the wellbeing of those who cannot hope to achieve the levels of astuteness that I have." She walked on.

Glinda followed her, rushing to keep up. "What the dickens does _that_ mean?"

* * *

Through the din and crudeness of southern Emerald City, a toothless Munchkin woman smiled at Glinda and thrust out a tin cup as she walked by. "Oh!" cried a startled Glinda, stepping back. Elphaba, bless her, grabbed her wrist and dragged her away. 

"It's best if you don't make eye contact," said Elphaba softly. "I know it's sad, but there's nothing we can do."

If there was evidence of poverty right within the northern gates of the Emerald City, it paled in comparison to the worn filth of the southern parts of the City. With a squinted eye, Glinda thought it might feel as though they were surrounded by death. But no, they were all alive, and this was even rather tragic. They would be better off _dead_, it seemed, these droves of dirty, starving, despair, the barefoot and the cold, the sick and ignored.

She shivered. "Elphie, tell me how long we'll have to be here."

"As long as it takes for me to find the boarding house," said Elphaba distractedly.

"Hell," muttered Glinda. "That could take ages." Elphaba gave her a dirty look and she decided she would perhaps remain silent for the remainder of the trip.

The trouble, Elphaba was realizing, was that she was not really the "protecting" sort, and as she and Glinda sauntered through what both felt was the more dangerous part of the majestic city, she started feeling as though she had to be the hero, or the defender of the two of them, and this just did not sit right. She, Elphaba, was many things – logical to a fault, analytical, exceedingly erudite, and yes, even brave in a number of situations – but she did not like how she had been saddled with the job of taking care of Glinda. She certainly _loved_ Glinda, and that was an issue too, but she could not see why her life had suddenly turned into an affair of 'How's _Glinda_ doing?' and 'Let's make sure_ Glinda_ is okay,' and 'What can I do to make _Glinda_ feel safer?'

She also did not know how to _stop_ the fanatical fixation with Glinda, either.

The boarding house was owned by a sweet, plump little woman who was so fiercely protective of her boarders that it took Elphaba and Glinda nearly a half-hour to adequately convince the woman that they meant no harm to any of her boarders. Elphaba told the story of their meeting Halivan and his stories of his families and his subsequent death. The story had been gone over so many times by now that she was beginning to regard it as fiction; the much sought after Halivan family was on the forefront of her mind, while her reason for seeking them out was becoming forgotten. It was almost as though she were grieving over Halivan's death, but forgetting the source of her grief.

"Mrs. Halivan and the children are in the third room upstairs and that is the saddest story I've ever heard," said the boarding house owner. "I liked that Mr. Halivan; he always complimented my cooking."

At the door to the third room upstairs, a shocking display of decidedly _not_ brave qualities suddenly attacked Elphaba. She became stagnant and quite—well, Glinda was loath to use the phrase "ashen" because it implied a lack of pigmentation that did not line up correctly with Elphaba as a whole, but really that's what it was.

"What an idea!" the green girl said, somewhat to herself. "Let's go back. We can even walk."

Glinda looked mildly surprised, although she was more than she let on. "Go back?"

"Yes, I—Well, would you want a stranger traipsing into your home and telling you of your husband's death?"

_It depends on the husband_ thought Glinda wryly, quite amused with herself and the situation entirely, if she was truthful. What she said, though, was, "Well, I was against it from the start, wasn't I? But you made good points—it isn't fair for Halivan's family to just wonder where he is until the end of time. Imagine waiting every evening for someone to come home, and then they never do. Why, it makes me sick just thinking of it." The entire thing made her sick, really, but she wasn't sure which was the most ill-making—the thought of never knowing that a loved one had died, or being the bearer of the sad news, as though she and Elphaba had been appointed officers of mortuary affairs or suchlike. Or, really, Halivan being dead in the first place, as if she hadn't just set out on what she thought was going to be a frivolous adventure, a few weeks of harmless Wizard visiting, where she could get away from school and be with her closest friend; Elphie, who brought out the thinker, the explorer, the social activist in her.

It was a difficult climate to adapt to, she decided. To go from thoughts of shabbily dressed Goats to a solemn face and a grave voice saying, "We regret to inform you that your Horse has died."

Glinda's amusement turned sour.

"Look, Elphie, we came this far, didn't we?" she asked helplessly, because it wasn't often that she was called upon to be the voice of reason and she'd liked things how they _were_, thank-you-very-much. "We might as well just—"

Abruptly, Elphaba knocked on the door. Her knuckles had gone strangely white.

The Horse that answered the door was very obviously female, although Glinda had assumed that you wouldn't be able to tell—and having known a sparse few Animals in her time, she decided to excuse her own ignorance. But this Horse, she had unquestionably feminine features, a gentler and milder slope of the muzzle, a leaner neck and abdomen with pronounced croups and hindquarters, long eyelashes, a softer, longer, more elegant mane. Embarrassed, Glinda decided that she wouldn't call her _pretty_ or anything, but you could tell she was a woman.

The dress she was wearing helped, too.

Glinda poked Elphaba, who had adopted that white-with-nervousness thing again, but her companion stayed silent, staring at the expectant Horse with wide eyes and flared nostrils.

"Er, Mrs. Halivan?" asked Glinda tentatively.

"Can I help you?"

Awkwardly, she said, "We have news of your husband," and then winced at the gravity of the statement, adding on hurriedly, "We're friends of his."

Perhaps Horses were not apt at showing emotion, or perhaps Mrs. Halivan was the type to shun it, because the mare (or was it Mare, wondered Glinda) did not express any of the likely emotions one assumed one would see at the mention of a missing husband. She merely nodded and said, "Won't you both come in, Misses…"

"Glinda," she replied, finding inappropriateness in tacking on the accompanying accoutrements to her name. She gestured to the green stick of cowardice beside her and said, "And this is Elphaba."

"Please, both of you—come in."

The cramped room that they were ushered into seemed to encompass several functions at once – living, dining, sleeping, and everything in between. The lack of a second room suggested that there was no indoor plumbing, and the chamber pot in the corner confirmed it; Glinda blushed at the image of a Horse (or any type of Animal for that matter) attempting to crouch over a toilet. Or a chamber pot, really.

There were three Horses, smaller in size that must have been the children, who were sprawled out on the floor, books open in front of them. One was reading aloud to the other two. Two boys and a girl, if Glinda remembered Halivan's stories correctly, or was it two Colts and a Filly? She wasn't overly conversant on horse terms, although there were quite a few at the estate in Frottica, but it wasn't the sort of thing one ever cared to know unless one was standing right in front of the situation.

"Across the hall with you three," said Mrs. Halivan briskly, "and ask the Mule if she won't look after you for a little while."

This garnered more than a few grumbles, but they complied, the eldest taking the book in his teeth and trotting out on his back legs. "A beast, that woman," said one of them to its sibling. "With Monsters for children, if you ask me."

"Out!" barked Mrs. Halivan. And once they were, in the interval of time in which tea would normally be offered and comforting seats gestured to, Mrs. Halivan said to Glinda and Elphaba, "They'll hear about the death of their father in good time; now, tell me."

"Oh! Then, you know?" asked Elphaba stupidly, the first thing she'd said to the widowed Horse, unfortunate a comment as it was.

"Do I look as though I haven't a brain, girl?" said the Horse sharply and Elphaba looked somewhat cowed. "I'd resigned myself to his death ages ago, although I confess to not having anticipated a _notification_. What do you expect me to think when you come in here with your grave tones and your somber expressions? How did it happen, at least, I've wondered that?"

There was a pause and an exchanged look between the University girls, and Mrs. Halivan said hastily, "Take a seat." They complied, sitting gingerly on the edge of a lumpy sofa while Mrs. Halivan lowered herself into a chair across from them, a strange entanglement where her tail stuck out through the back of the chair.

"How did you come to…"

"It was very recently, in fact," said Elphaba, finding her voice again. She told the whole bloody story, from what she knew, from Halivan being captured by Lacchus, their discovery of him and subsequent liberation, to the very end when it all fell apart. It was a difficult story to tell, which Glinda's sullen demeanor adequately expressed, but Elphaba thought it might be an even more difficult story to hear.

Mrs. Halivan sniffed when it was over, not sadly, but importantly. "He was always getting himself into one scrape after another. Too trusting, as well. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't captured at all and just went willingly with that Lacchus man; yes, that sounds like something he would do."

Elphaba frowned. "I am sure that is not how it happened."

"Well, I imagine you must know my husband better than I," cracked the Horse sarcastically, flashing a not nice smile (did the bared teeth constitute a smile?) at Elphaba as she stood up. "At any rate, I suppose I should thank you for delivering the news. If you'll be wanting a reward of some sort—"

"A reward?" asked Elphaba, stricken. "For what?"

"What business is it of two normal girls—although, I question my tagging _you_ with that label, never seen skin like that—" she said, gesturing to Elphaba, "if my husband lives or dies, unless they think they can get something out of saddling the poor, grieving widow with the bad news?"

She stalked away, reverting to all fours, and grumbling, "I've got slop I can feed you and that's all. We haven't got any—"

"Mrs. Halivan, you misunderstand," said Elphaba desperately as she and Glinda rose. "We don't want a _reward_. Really, of all things."

The Horse turned a sharp eye on first Elphaba and then Glinda, who said, "Your husband was our friend. It was our assumption that the family he told us about would want to know."

The Horse paused. "You sought me out just to tell me my husband is dead?"

"Yes."

"We thought it would be terrible to never know and always wonder," added Elphaba.

Mrs. Halivan's expression had softened marginally; at least, Glinda thought, she wasn't scary anymore. She took her seat in the chair again and Glinda and Elphaba followed suit, plopping back down onto the lumpy sofa.

"It's rare," said Mrs. Halivan thoughtfully, "that girls of your age should care what happens to my husband or his family. In fact, it is rare for girls of any age. Or people, for that matter."

"He was our friend," said Glinda simply.

"And we are a family hiding out in the Emerald City, for fear of persecution. We don't make friends." Her voice had lost its initial harshness, but her eyes narrowed, as if she were still waiting for a presentation of their ulterior motives. "It isn't the best of situations."

"Obviously not," said Elphaba with a quiet fervor that gave Glinda chills. "Like the man who killed your husband in the first place, who I intend on finding."

"And doing what?" asked Mrs. Halivan, amused.

"There is a sense of justice that I feel has gone unfulfilled."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," scolded Mrs. Halivan mildly. "No one expects a girl to go off on a justice crusade on behalf of wronged Animals. Save your energy."

Elphaba blanched at the tension of being out-and-out scolded, but recovered remarkably quickly. "Ma'am, your husband is not the first Animal whom I've grown fond of only to have him die," she said hotly, "and I'm almost entirely certain he won't be the last, so of course no one expects it, but I—"

"You're a child. Finish school, become a woman, fall into the stenciled outline of society, see if you still care about Animals." She laughed roughly, hollowly. "A young generation of liberal-minded Thinkers and every one of them feels it's their duty to protest on behalf of some wronged social group. If it wasn't the Animals, it'd be the Quadlings—" Elphaba's cheeks darkened and her eyes lowered—"or whoever. Elves, maybe, look like you're a cousin. Radical protestation doesn't come about over oppressed beings; it's just boredom."

Glinda glanced at Elphaba in an effort to gage just how well the girl was locking down her emotions. Elphaba spoke in a quiet, strangled tone. "And perhaps oppressed beings are oppressed because they don't attempt to be otherwise. It's nice to know that some are doing the Wizard's work for him." She stood. "We are terribly sorry for your loss, Mrs. Halivan." Glinda could not do anything but follow her and try to keep up as she strode out of the room and down the hall.

It was her fervent wish that it would be over, but Elphaba seemed to be on a tirade consisting of: "How dare…" and "If only there was in existence a society wherein cynicism was _not_ so commonplace," and "No one's impressed with sacrificial independence, I should know that."

It was amusing, to say the least, although Glinda didn't plan on saying so, but the situation was very plain: that Elphie had met someone who was far too similar to herself, and she didn't appear to like it at all.

They stood in the sitting room of the boarding house and Elphaba was mumbling ferociously, rifling through her bag, her lips set in a hard, determined line. "What are you doing?" asked Glinda once she noticed that Elphaba was wrapping the remains of their money in a handkerchief.

"In the name of science, if you will, observe whether or not an acceptance of money is too much for Mrs. Halivan to take. Perhaps she'll do something correctly and—"

"That's all our money."

"Oh." She took out a bit. "Enough for carriage ride home and a few nights in a cheap inn. We'll leave the hotel; sorry, that's the last of indoor plumbing for sometime."

"Why does she get all our money, especially when it wasn't even our money in the first place?" asked Glinda, leaving the frightfully more important question unasked, that of 'why are you making decisions without my input?'

"Glinda," said Elphaba quietly, re-wrapping the money. "How many children do you have to feed?"

They left the money with the landlady's assurance that Mrs. Halivan would receive it, and they went back to the hotel where Elphaba decided they could checkout in the morning and one last night of a comfortable bed and a bath for Glinda to wash her hair in wouldn't be overly terrible.

"Sometimes I think you like Animals better than people, which isn't fair," said Glinda as they returned to their room, putting their things down. It was late afternoon and dispersing into early evening, the sun creeping up to the half-closed blinds and bathing the room in a show of shadow and verdancy.

The assertion felt true to her – it did seem often that Elphaba favored Animals over people, as if she hadn't been entirely satisfied with the value of people and so had moved onto the next rung down the ladder, but Glinda couldn't work up the proper amount of resentment like she felt she should. It was this love thing, this terrible inconvenient mess, making one see the best in the person of whom one was in love with and elevating and magnifying the good things they did while (she feared) glossing over the bad. _Elphaba's deed was certainly a good one,_ _but you'd think she'd saved all of Oz from uncertain tragedy with the way I'm carrying on and swooning_, she thought disdainfully.

For she _was_ carrying on and swooning and it was _humiliating_ and she sincerely hoped that Elphaba didn't notice. If she did, she made no indication of it, for Glinda was openly staring at her lips as Elphie admitted: "I like some Animals better than most people." She added, "While I also like a one person better than I like anyone, I think."

The force of the statement caught her off-guard, because Glinda had been thinking of _other_ things and noticing that Elphaba had very long fingers, very long indeed. "That's very nice," she said vaguely. "I knew that you could be nice to me if you really tried."

"Oh, I was referring to Avaric; who did you think I was referring to?"

"You can't fool me," said Glinda huffily. "I saw what you did today. No one without a soul would've done that. I think I've discovered your secret." She had, she was entirely sure of it, and it made her love Elphaba all the more, generating a desire to show Elphaba just how _much_ she loved her, to hang on desperately to every idea that made her insides do that odd fluttering thing.

"It's all hearsay," said Elphaba, who was in good spirits and unwilling to debate the issue for now. "I won't confirm or deny." She took one of her books out of her bag and sat down on the bed. They were very slender, too, those fingers, and entirely all-out green.

"Are we going to the Palace?" asked Glinda, wondering if a departure from the bedroom setting would make things easier or harder.

"No."

"Well, we've no money for shopping and it's too early for dinner, so… what are we doing?"

"I hadn't realized activities were so nicely broken up into shopping and eating. _I_ will be studying tonight, as Shiz doesn't disappear just because we're not there for it, and I suggest you do the same."

"I didn't bring any books," said Glinda, scowling, "and you know that."

"Pity. Read one of mine if it'll keep you quiet."

"Isn't there—well…" She climbed onto the bed, as well. Elphaba had removed her shoes and was sitting up with her knees against her chest in a position that looked both alarmingly uncomfortable and peculiarly attractive. Glinda removed her shoes as well. "Isn't there something else we could do?"

"Like what?" asked Elphaba, who was already far too engrossed in her book.

"Like—Elphie, what will happen when we get back to school?"

"What?"

Was she not paying attention on instinct or on purpose? "When we get back to school? What happens, then?"

Elphaba gave her a hard look. "I very much doubt I'll pass any exams if I can't study for them, is that what you're asking?"

"No."

The book was discarded on the bed and a sigh heaved from its owner. "I am purposely missing the point so as to force you to say what you're thinking; I should think you would recognize this tactic, as I use it _all_ the time."

Glinda thought for a moment. It was that sheet of black hair, it was distracting. "Oh, I see."

"So, what is it?"

She was unsure of how it happened, although in years to come Glinda would try in vain to recreate the situation in her mind, to reconstruct the events as they unfolded, her lips coming closer, the book falling off the bed, the cold fingers becoming scorching as they trailed over shoulders, collar bones, poked under straps and pulled down. Shifting and removal of clothing, sliding under covers, moving against flesh, too. It was all terribly trite and ridiculous and the most wonderful feeling she had ever had, that heavy black hair that she so coveted was everywhere at once, on every part of her, in every sense.

And some of it was clumsy and sometimes Elphaba cursed softly and sometimes neither girl felt impassioned, sometimes both girls felt only frustration, sometimes it was warm and it was so cold outside, the rain, the beating against the windows, the wet evaporation into still darkness.

Sometimes Glinda cried. Sometimes it felt so good, Elphaba's persistent hand, that she sobbed and shouted at once.

And some of it, most of it, was quite beautiful.

* * *

A cauterized streak of moonlight invaded the bed, flitting like a nuisance over facial features, fingers, skin. Glinda yawned and stretched, turning toward the window. "Elphie?" she said quietly. 

Elphaba stirred, opened one eye. She was startled to find the moon nestling in bed with them. "Yes?" She slid one arm across Glinda's shoulder, sliding closer to her. She didn't think of herself as the type to smell someone hair, but she did it anyway.

"What are we going to—I just wanted to know if you were awake."

"Yes." She slid one hand along the bare flesh of Glinda's side; rounding it, she grasped at the flesh there, the soft stomach that yielded and trembled at her touch. Glinda took her hand, lacing their fingers together. The moonlight illuminated the contrast of them, lit up the beauty and blurred the imperfections. Elphaba looked. It was pretty, this big deal of green on white. She was one color, but Glinda seemed to be many at once, the pinks and whites and peaches.

"Good."

"You were going to say something?"

"Was I?" She was distracted now. Not even facing Elphaba, she could nearly feel the green girl's slight smile.

"Yes, 'what are we going to'…"

"What are we going to… Oh." She had cut herself off for a reason, so afraid was she of the answer to _any_ question in the vein of 'we'. "Oh. I was going to say, what are we going to do when we get back to Shiz?"

Elphaba was silent for awhile. "Finish our education, I suppose. You'll go on to be a famous sorceress, I'm sure, known across Oz for her beauty and power. I'll… Oh, I'll recede into the background as usual, perhaps—"

"That's not what I meant and you know it." She turned around to face her. Elphie's hand slid to accommodate her, settling on the small of her back. "I mean, about you and I—is it 'you and me,' actually? At any rate—what happens to us when we go back to Crage Hall?"

She was startled to see the blank look on Elphaba's face, as if she had finally for the first time caught her in a state of not-thinking, or not-knowing. It was disconcerting, as if Elphaba actually did not know what to say.

She articulated this with, "I don't know what to say, Glinda."

"Well, say you won't forget that I love you when we're back in school," she replied desperately. "Say nothing will change."

"Nothing will change."

Glinda bit her lip. "Now, mean it."

Elphaba's silence was deafening, throbbing. Glinda buried her face in the bare green shoulder, abrupt, desperate, uncertain. "Oh, Elphie," she mumbled, "please make some sort of promise, anything, please."

"I promise—" And she stopped and she glanced at the moonlight and she shut her eyes from it. Her hand found its way to the nape of Glinda's neck, the damp hair. "No one will ever touch me where you've touched me; I promise that. Your hand—" and she took said hand and pulled it—"is the only hand to touch me."

The blonde shifted her face toward the pillow for fear of stinging that bare green shoulder. "Okay," she said.

Elphaba nodded. The week had gotten shorter.


	6. A Resounding Imperative

The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or anything like that.

Author's Notes: Oh, well, um... I guess that took a very long time, didn't it? I'm sorry. To make up for it, this chapter is the tiniest bit longer than usual (actually, it just ended up that way) and I promise (really this time) that chapter seven (the last one) will be along much quicker than this one. Thank you to everyone for your continued support and whatnot.

* * *

Chapter 6: A Resounding Imperative 

It was rounding the time that Crope had once referred to as the money rush. The Emerald City was louder and busier than normal as the bankers and the businessmen and the Palace officials and the city's finest headed off in one general direction—the Palace Square, the very hub and district of Oz import/export. This was notable for no other reason than, even through the closed window of a random room on the eleventh floor, one could observe that it got very _loud_ atmospherically. It is because of this that Elphaba first awoke, and also because of this that she knew what time it was.

"Oh, no," she mumbled, sitting up. "Meeting with the—social secretary—Glinda, you fool—you let us sleep. We're late."

Glinda neglected to reply, more because she was still sleeping than anything, although it is prudent to point out that, _had_ she been awake, she would've pretended to be sleeping anyway; so as not to face Elphie's wrath.

"It's past nine and our appointment was for six," went on Elphaba, climbing out of bed, "and you know it usually takes hours for them to see us anyway, so I suspect we won't even be looked at until well past noon, if we're looked at at all, and we've got to check-out of here before noon unless we want another day added onto the bill." She made a noise that expressed an emotion somewhere between frustration and anxiety, which _did_ wake Glinda up.

She yawned, "Elphie, come back to bed."

"Get dressed. We're extraordinarily late."

"Elphie, I'm _cold_."

"Well—you'll be warmer once you have some… clothes on."

"What _for_?"

"Glinda." Elphaba was impatient. "Didn't you hear anything I said?"

"Oh, I wasn't really listening," said Glinda blithely. "I was more sleeping, really, but as I understand it, we've missed our appointment by three hours, and we have three hours before we need to check out. Sounds as though we've fallen upon a wonderful opportunity to sleep for three more hours."

Elphaba slipped back into the bed because, if truth be told, she was cold, too. "It was an important meeting; you see, the whole reason we came here was to meet with the Wizard, don't you remember?" If she was trying to be scathingly sarcastic, Glinda thought, she might try looking less affectionate.

"Yes, but I already know what they'll say: 'The Wizard is a very busy individual and you'll have to wait, wait the same as any'."

Trying to hide her smile because it _was_ a spot-on impression of every official they'd come into contact with, save for Glinda's habitual Gillikin pronunciation of things, Elphaba said, "We can't be bumped off the waiting list. We need to make an appearance."

"So, we'll make one, sometime before five," reasoned Glinda. "And we'll check out before noon, but honestly, Elphie. _Honestly_." She laid her cheek against Elphaba's bony shoulder and closed her eyes. "How offensive," she mumbled, "to go flitting off to the Palace when there's a girl in your bed who hasn't any clothes on."

Elphaba snorted. "My mother was right about the Gillikinese, you know," she said somewhat facetiously. "They _are_ manipulative."

"Yes, every last one of us," agreed Glinda. Her cheeks flushed and her stomach turned in the way it did when Elphie spoke of her mother. Or anything, really, that was seemingly important and didn't get a lot of conversation time. Adoration worked in peculiar ways.

Elphaba closed her eyes as the sun poked half-heartedly through the curtains and then gave up, seemingly uninspired.

That, of course, is the story of how Glinda first manipulated Elphaba into a blatant shirking of responsibilities on the very morning that they were set to meet with the social secretary.

* * *

The Commander-General of Audiences was a brisk man with legs too long for his body and eyes too small for his face. Elphie had gone and started the whole interview off on the wrong foot by telling him that she was entirely sure that they had been waiting a great deal longer than the young man with the bright smile who wanted permission for the opening of a barber shop in the Palace Square and why was it that he was able to meet with the officials much quicker than they were? 

Needless to say, the Commander-General was not as inclined to argue with Elphaba as most. He asked them of their intentions, a great deal of what Elphaba felt she had written on every terrible application and piece of file work she'd been handed thus far, but she bit back the retort about reading with one's eyes because Glinda looked so pale and nervous. Elphaba sighed.

"We have information for the Wizard that we feel is important to share as good citizens of Oz and whatnot," she said in a dry tone that she hoped was adequately polished enough. Glinda relaxed visibly.

The Commander-General narrowed his eyes. "What's that? What information?"

"Well," said Elphaba, "it's information that we'd rather tell the Wizard himself, you see—that's why we requested audience with _him_ and not with the Commander-General." A sharp jab in her ribs and a hasty look from Glinda prompted her to append, "With all due respect, sir."

The Commander-General wrote something down and then rifled through a few papers. Elphaba was pleased to see that all that paperwork she had filled out was not for naught; there appeared to be several markings scrawled upon it, as though someone had read it thoroughly. Good, too, since she'd felt it had been some of her best writing to date.

"Is this information an attempt to notify the Wizard about something that could be detrimental to Oz?" the Commander-General asked.

"Er, yes, I'd think so," Elphaba responded. It really very well depended on whether the Wizard looked at things in large scale or small scale, and although Elphaba hoped for the latter, what she knew of him struck her as being very large-scale indeed.

"And finally," the Commander-General flicked his eyes up toward her, "who sent you?"

"_Sent_ us?" exclaimed Glinda, proving to all in the room that she did actually know how to speak. "Whatever does that mean?"

"We came of our own volition," said Elphaba thoughtfully, "unless you mean to ask about a larger organization."

"The Wizard does not meet with schoolgirls habitually." The Commander-General was brisk. "And unless there's some sort of affiliation, I don't see how he should happen to make the time to see you."

Glinda glanced at Elphaba, who, at this point, was looking quite annoyed. Glinda shook her arm gently and meant to say something placating and singularly helpful, but the hard squaring of Elphaba's jaw put her off a little.

Finally Elphaba muttered, "Madame Morrible. Sent us, that is. That's our affiliation."

Glinda, thankfully, kept her mouth shut.

The Commander-General looked over a few things and then decided: "Tomorrow at eleven. You will have four minutes between the Ambassador to Ix and the Matron of the Ladies' Home Guard Social Nourishment Brigade."

"Four minutes?" cried Elphaba.

"You should be glad you're getting that much," he responded and handed her a white card. "Dress code is formal."

* * *

Glinda waited a full three seconds after they had left the Palace. "Now, isn't that interesting," she sang out, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "I had no idea Madame Morrible had sent us, Elphie. Truly, this puts an entirely different spin on our entire situation. You two are in cahoots, I see, and all this time I thought you hated—" 

"All right," growled Elphaba. She scowled briefly. "I was worried we weren't going to be able to see the Wizard."

"This is new territory," continued Glinda. "I've never known you to be anything but entirely honest—often brutally so."

"You're baiting me, it isn't funny."

Glinda frowned in thought. "No, it's sort of funny."

"Look, it wasn't an entire lie," said Elphaba logically. In distraction, she fished into her pocket for the card the Commander-General had given her. "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Doctor Dillamond's fate and Doctor Dillamond surely wouldn't be where _he_ is at this moment if it wasn't for our distinguished Head. She certainly did send us; she just doesn't know she did." Her tone became sour at the very end and Glinda noted the collapsed and defeated expression.

"Sorry," she offered weakly and Elphaba flashed a faint and forgiving smile, glancing up from the card.

"You didn't happen to pack that dress you have," said Elphaba, "the one with the sort of green muslin thing on it, or whatever it is?"

"No," said Glinda. "Capped sleeves are out of season. Why?"

Elphaba passed the regulations card to her, snickering. Glinda looked the card over as they walked past the Palace Square, towards the inn that they had procured a room in earlier. Her eyes widened. "What do they mean undergarments of lime? How should they know what my undergarments look like?" She snorted distastefully. "And why _lime_?"

"I'm sure we can ignore that," said Elphaba, ripping the card up into small pieces.

"Well, it might have said something important."

"I doubt it."

"I am certain there is some law against tearing up Palace authorized paper."

"There is not."

"Well, I wish there was a law against you disagreeing with me," said a frazzled Glinda, "for I think you do it purely on principle—"

"Glinda."

"As difficult as it is to believe, I do say some things that are correct—"

"Glinda, _shhh_..."

"—sometimes. Don't _shhh_ me, this is important to me—"

"_Shhh!_" Elphaba dragged her into an alley and pressed her against the wall, her lips coming swiftly to muffle the next words, which dissolved into an indignant whimper. Glinda leaned into the kiss, momentarily forgetting her annoyance.

Elphaba pulled away, whispered, "Be silent," and pointed.

Glinda craned her neck around the side of the building to peer at the main road, but it was getting dark and there really wasn't much to see. "What am I being silent for?" she whispered loudly. Then the full head of blonde hair and the tailored tunic became clearer—a man, climbing out of a carriage and unloading something in the back. He turned.

"Drauc," she said, hushed.

"Isn't it," murmured Elphie.

"My," said Glinda in a cross-breeding of awestruck dumbfoundedness and amused annoyance, "this _is_ a small city; I hadn't realized."

"Look," pointed Elphaba. "He's unloading all those hides. How many are from Animals, do you think?"

"I don't know," mumbled Glinda uneasily. "Elphie, take me back to the inn."

"In a moment."

"Elphie, I feel sick. Please?"

Elphaba looked at her for a moment and then said, "Can't you go back yourself?"

"_No_. What are you going to _do_?"

"I just think I'd like to have a conversation with him." Drauc had disappeared into the building, but his carriage was still there, so she assumed he'd come out soon.

"And what do you think that will accomplish?" whispered Glinda harshly. "Elphie."

"_What_? Silly me, I thought you knew he was a murderer and that Halivan did us a good service. How easily we forget."

"Stop it."

Elphaba was silent for an extended stretch of time, her gaze divided between the ashen expression on Glinda's face and the carriage heaped with hides. To Glinda, the moment was a bit too long, a bit too otherworldly, and—worst of all—rife with a tension that Elphaba was perhaps too preoccupied to acknowledge.

The decision was made, Glinda realized. "I'll find my way back to the inn myself," she said quietly. Elphaba's hands dropped from their place on Glinda's wrists like dead weight. If she was remorseful, she did not let on.

Glinda had one last thing to say once she had pushed past Elphaba and retreated almost entirely out of the alley; a half-turn and an expression that suggested exhaustion, devoid of its habitual petulance: "I should be severely put out if you died. Please don't."

The path from the cold alley to the desolate inn was an exhausted one indeed.

* * *

"Oh! Well, then—I do believe I have the wrong room." The lock had turned and the door had opened and someone other than Elphaba had entered the room, prompting Glinda to jump out of her chair in surprise. The worn, creased lines of the man's face made him look like the sort of man whose fatigue was more earned than his appearance would ever truly let on. He was filthy and moved slowly, giving Glinda pause. 

"Er, yes, I think," replied Glinda, personally uncertain as to whether or not she was frightened or curious.

"It's—see—" The man cautiously held up his key. "It says '9' on it, and the key worked. I suppose there's been a mix-up."

"I suppose there has been."

"I didn't mean to startle you." His soft chuckle was muffled as he drew his hand over his face. The effect was unclear—he appeared neither cleaner nor more awake after this action. "Whatever it is that has you as jumpy as you appear—I'm sure things work themselves out entirely, don't they?"

She could not help but feel indignant. "I am not sure I know what you mean, sir," she said coolly.

"No." He leaned against the doorjamb. "Have you ever walked the Yellow Brick Road? It's only a question."

An odd question at that, but she felt no hesitance in answering it. "Yes. For as short a time as any, I made my way toward it."

"Well, then, you know, don't you? How the dirt starts off at your ankles and by the time it's evening, the wind has picked up to where it's now circling at the height of your head, getting in your eyes, your mouth, your nostrils? The Gillikin River has tributaries of dust—at some points, it's just all dust."

Glinda frowned. "Perhaps there was no wind when I did it," she said, feeling inadequate.

He smiled. "That's just it, I'd say. It works itself out entirely."

All the forceful weather in Oz could not have stopped her from smiling back. "Would you like some water?"

He moved further into the room slowly, accepting the cup when she poured from the pitcher atop the bureau. It was fitting, she decided, that he should drink all their water and smudge his darkened fingers along the porcelain of the cups and saucers. Elphaba didn't drink water. And Elphaba wasn't there anyway.

"The deserts in the west," he said, once he'd finished drinking, "are conditioned. I mean that they're expected, you see, and you hear that a Winkie can survive without water for weeks upon weeks. Are they rumors? Yes, I'd say it's all rumors, but they come out of something, don't they?"

"Yes," murmured Glinda in agreement. She poured him more water.

"It would be easy," he went on, "to divide the land into compartments, of course. Lush forestation to the north, marshy swampland in the south. Deserts to the west and fertile farmland in the east. It's even said that one could chip his tooth just _walking_ into the Glikkus or cut his finger just thinking about the emerald mines."

Glinda, who had not heard this particular aphoristic platitude before, merely listened.

"When such isolation occurs, pockets are created. It is out of such pockets that a city like this fine one we find ourselves scraping about in can be created. How can a land boast unity when there are territorial borders, when there's a distinct shift in class? Why—" and here he lowered his voice significantly for the door was still quite open—"pledge unity to a Wizard whose achievements are only murmured about, never seen?"

"Why, indeed?" choked Glinda in an awed whisper.

"You understand it, then," he said decisively, and drank the last of the water. "That's why I'm seeking audience with the illustrious Wizard himself."

"That's what we're trying to do as well," said Glinda. "We have a meeting with him tomorrow at—tomorrow at eleven."

The man seemed surprised. "It is possible, then?"

"Well, I should think, we've been waiting long enough."

He smiled. It was both familiar and forbearing. "That gives me hope, then. Thank you for the water." He held up the key, the '9' becoming a '6' for a moment as he turned it around in his hand. "I'd best sort out this mix-up with the desk downstairs."

* * *

Elphaba had only ventured a short way into the warehouse before someone had prodded her in the back into a dark, abandoned hallway, pressed her face against the wall, and hissed, "Shh." 

She was uncomfortable, breathing in the dank scent of the cratered wood she was face-to-face with. Her attacker snorted at her, saying, "I know who you are; stay quiet."

She did, more out of necessity than obedience; her lips were mashed against the wall. After a moment, she nodded as much as she was able—and after another moment, she was released. She turned, opened her mouth to ask one of the many questions colliding against the front of her brain, and then thought better of it, wordlessly following the Pig—for she knew now that it was such, his spiraled tail waved lewdly at her—down another, darker, narrower corridor.

"Horem double-booked," said the Pig in a hushed whisper. "But this is my mission, plain as day and you ought to get yourself out of here."

"Mission?"

"_Shh_…" He pulled her down yet another corridor, this one even more shrouded. They were deeper into the building now; Elphaba was not quite sure she'd be able to find the exit from here—perhaps that was the idea, though. The Pig was miffed, to say the least: "Horem trusts you to pull of a mission like this—he just _met_ you, didn't he, bloody right, I wouldn't trust—"

"Horem," she repeated. _Yes, of course_, came the cold, empty thought. The cloaked figure in the chapel. She narrowed her eyes, wondering, "Is Horem an Animal?"

A high-pitched giggle came from the Pig's throat, although not necessarily connected to him. "He's no Animal," he said. "Human. Like you. Horem the human. Not his real name, of course, just his code, but it serves its alliterative purpose, doesn't it? Listen—" He leaned in closer, his snout nearly brushing her skin. "It's my mission what you're cutting in on here; go back and tell Horem I've got it, I _have_ it; I'm about to do it."

Elphaba shook her head. "I know nothing of any mission."

"Of course you do. Horem thinks I can't handle it by myself, but it's not such a complex operation. Black trade, quality Animal hides—not too big, still specialized. Take out the leader, it all crumbles. Easy. And I've seen him, the leader—he looks like a nancy—very pretty if you like the type."

Elphaba dithered for a moment, frowning in the dark anonymity of the blackened corridor. At her back was a door, she could feel the knob digging into her back, but she couldn't see it. She could barely make out the tint of her own hands—could only see the slight gleaming shine of the Pig's eyes. "Drauc," she said finally, finding her heavy tongue. "You mean to kill Drauc."

"_Shhh_. Of course. Don't pretend Horem didn't send you."

"He didn't. I came in here by chance; I've come across this character before. Skinned and sold a—a friend of mine."

"Did he now? He's still my mark."

"I don't want to kill him," she spat, the sick rising in her throat. "I want to—" But she was unable to finish because the ambiguity was too perverse, her resolve was not thick enough. She simply wanted Drauc to pay for what he had done but she could not understand the currency or the conversion of it—what constituted payment? There was no retribution for the crime Drauc had committed because it simply wasn't a crime at all, not by the Wizard's standards.

Her whisper was harsh. "He told us—I was led to believe that Drauc was supposed to be mayor to some place up in Gillikin."

The Pig giggled again. "Not a lie, I should say. That's all true. He probably will be mayor—or would have been, really, I'm going to kill him, aren't I—of some Gillikinese village. Good to have folk like him in power, eh?"

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark by now and, having that sense no longer incapacitated, she began to hear the rustling of things below, men's voices, the sounds that accompanied metal tools and wood tables. The Pig listened, too, following Elphaba's silence.

"Down there," he said, nodding. "I don't suppose this Drauc is off by himself, but I've got a handle on it."

"Not very discreet," said Elphaba dispassionately, "an Animal assassin lurking about."

"Well, we haven't got much in the way of humans working for the cause, do we? Excluding Horem, of course. There could be humans higher up than us, but I doubt it, and furthermore, I'll never meet any of them, will I? It was ages before I even saw Horem without his damned cloak."

Elphaba found herself unable to listen too enthusiastically now, so distracting were the sounds below. The sickening scrape of metal did _things_ to a mind, she was sure; the courage she had felt moments ago when she'd stalked off behind Drauc was gone, dissipated at her feet.

"Look. Listen, listen." The Pig was even quieter. She had to lean in to hear him properly. "Perhaps it weren't all for nothing that old Horem sent you."

"He didn't send me."

"Well, say he did, say he did, I could use you." She could just make out his eyes in the dark, darting frenziedly. "As a distraction, so I can draw out the mark."

It sounded terrible, Elphaba thought, but she was helpless at this point.

"It isn't dangerous," said the Pig hastily. "I had an idea of knocking over a shelf—one of those large, wall ones—by the door so that the lot of them would run up to see what the commotion was. I'm relying on assumption, of course, that someone as high-up as Drauc wouldn't bother himself with anything as trivial as ­_clean-up_."

"I see."

"I planned to then hurry down the back entrance and hope for the best, but that's a bit risky, isn't it—if I'm already down there and someone _else_ trips the shelf, it's enormously better for me. And you could be out of the building before anyone is even halfway up the stairs."

"It _is_ certainly devoid of complications, isn't it?" said Elphaba wryly, a masked dread traversing its way down her spine. To be an accomplice (was that the word, she wondered? It sounded unduly dramatic) in a murder was an entirely different course of action than the one she had initially intended to pursue.

_But what did you mean to pursue? What did you intend, letting Glinda go back to the inn while you went on?_

No, thinking of Glinda was no good. It only made her feel guilty.

The Pig was waiting for her answer and she finally gave it, asking, "Where is this shelf?"

"By the entrance to the stairs. I'll show you."

Fortunately, the guilt was gone, replaced unerringly with a numb fear. She nodded mutely.

"Excellent," said the Pig. "I'll have to get your name so I can report it to Horem, tell him what a help you were."

It didn't matter if she closed her eyes or not; it was too dark to make a difference.

"Fae," she said. "That's my name."

* * *

There was an ominous—and rather unseemly, Glinda thought—crack of thunder as the man left the room; she looked out the window and the rain was coming down in sheets. The picturesque backalley view outside was a grim, muddy backdrop upon which the rain fell and then bounced on the pavement, escorting itself back upwards as though it, too, was puzzled as to why it had begun so quickly. 

And Glinda, for the second time in less than a week, found herself rather worried that Elphaba was stuck in the rain.

Oh, sure, they'd procured a replacement cloak for her and Glinda knew that she shouldn't be _too_ worried, and really, it would serve Elphaba right if something terrible were to happen to her because she was so damned hell-bent on making Drauc pay for his actions—and it wasn't raining too hard, was it, the streets were only a little bit flooded it seemed, but this was nothing to worry about, nothing at all.

Glinda bit her lip and stared out the window. It would probably let up in a minute or two.

She took her dinner, alone, and smuggled up food for Elphaba to take later and it still rained and she still wasn't exactly _worried_, but the idea of it didn't stick very nicely in the pit of her stomach. None of it did. Rather, if the rain and her stupid allergy hadn't killed her, Elphaba had surely suffered a clout to the head when Drauc had seen her sneaking around—or perhaps he had slit her throat. Or perhaps he had kidnapped her. Oh, that was just like him! To kidnap Elphaba and kill her and sell her skin—

Oh, wonderful, now she was worried _and_ queasy.

"What I'll do," said Glinda out loud, because the room was quiet and the only sound was the rain beating outside, "is I'll leave this door ajar—" She did so. "And I'll sit in this chair." She sat in the chair, facing the door. "And I'll—I'll read this book." She reached over and grabbed one of Elphaba's heavy tomes from the bed, flipped to an arbitrary page, and began to read. "And I'll wait."

She did wait. She read about abstract biological concepts, about this Durge theorist who had assembled followers as a reaction against realistic conventions in biology, about the most boring topics she'd ever read; she pretended she was Elphaba and that this sort of thing was interesting and although it continued to rain, she barely thought about it, until there was a sound at the door and she looked up.

This was an abstract concept in itself, a return to normalcy, a reaction against realistic conventions. She started when Elphaba appeared in the doorway—a hooded figure with dark eyes and a veil of shiftless, weighty hair, visible as she threw the hood back. Her lips were set in a firm line, her bony knuckles rapping against the doorframe as she entered with dark, shadowy flourish, like a terrible, wonderful caped Thing.

"Oh," said Glinda, for she could think of nothing else to say. "It's you, and you're back."

"Yes," agreed Elphaba and pulled her wet cloak off, draping it across another chair. "It's me and I'm back."

Glinda stood. She was unsure of where the cool, frosty environment had come from—just that it had come and it made her shiver. It was cold outside, she knew, and raining, but it was more than that. There was a tearing inside her, a stubborn fugue-like battle that urged her to wrap her arms around Elphaba's middle, to bury her head in the soft flowing hair—and shouting, also, that she shouldn't, that there was a dark emptiness to Elphaba's eyes, both frightening and intoxicating at once.

A lean elbow settled itself atop the bureau and the forearm stretched out and drummed impossibly long and slender fingers along the top of it. The long uneasiness gave Glinda a heady feeling; Elphaba's lips parted and her eyes, downcast, had a bit of guiltiness in them.

Perhaps simple, disobedient pleasure won out; perhaps aesthetic emotion was the clear victor in this case—so Glinda did just what she wanted, she moved closer and melted herself into Elphaba's embrace and drew her arms around Elphaba's waist and felt better for all of five seconds.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed. "You poor, poor thing."

"Oh, not so very poor," said Elphaba, sliding those gloriously slender fingers up into Glinda's bright, flaxen curls. "I should think and hope, at least."

"You didn't get too wet, did you?"

"The damage," said Elphaba with a warm kiss against Glinda's forehead, "is more psychological than actual."

"Oh!" cried Glinda, because it sounded harmful, whatever it was. She frowned and held Elphaba at arm's length to check her over, although truly there _was_ no damage that could be deemed actual—just a cold numbness to the skin, which she did her best to warm up with vigorous rubbing.

Lamenting over the absence of a fire and tut-tutting over the chattering, shivering state Elphaba was in, Glinda helped her onto the small bed and undressed her.

"I won't even ask what you did, I don't care, I'm only happy you're all right."

"Oh," muttered Elphaba as she pulled tighter the drab blanket that Glinda had wrapped around her. "Spoken like a true Gillikinese, trained for housewifely duties."

"This wasn't specifically in the training," remarked Glinda with a mild smile, "but there was a section of keeping dinner warm, and I did just that." She brought the food to Elphie's lap and sat beside her.

"I'm not very hungry."

"Well, you never are, are you? Here." She thrust the fork into Elphie's hand and moved the candle from the bureau to the bedside table for warmth. "Eat."

Elphaba did so, reluctantly, examining the food with narrowed eyes before spearing a vegetable on her fork. "It's really quite curious," she said between bites, "with the current of commerce and the economic hub that the Emerald City truly is—it'd be interesting to determine the ratio of legitimate Palace-sanctioned business to underground illegal business—"

"I am not listening," said Glinda airily. "I wish to know none of this."

"No, really, it's interesting." Elphaba set her fork down.

"Keep eating."

She kept eating. "Think—the Wizard's been in power for a long time now and there are even some businesses _forced_ to go underground because the waiting list to be legitimized by the Palace is too long! It's—where's our water?"

"You don't drink it, stop this." The sharpness was difficult for Glinda to mask from her tone as she spared a somewhat panicked, stricken glance toward the empty water pitcher.

"No, but if we heat it with the candle, I can put the vegetables in and you can have soup."

"Oh."

"Well, it _is_ somewhat endearing that you were that thirsty while I was gone."

"No, no. There was a mix-up." She sat beside Elphaba on the bed. "This man had gotten the spare key to our room and he looked tired, so I offered him our water."

"Hmm," said Elphaba in a noncommittal way, staring down at her food.

"Well, I thought, you don't drink water and I don't need it nearly as much as he seems to—"

"Oh, that's very generous of you. Did he just stand here and drink our water?"

"Yes. Well, yes, and we spoke a little."

"Hmm," said Elphaba in that same noncommittal way. She set her plate aside. "About what?"

"This is the part I meant to tell you, because this man—I didn't get his name—this man is also seeking audience with the Wizard, about improving conditions in Oz. I said, you'd like my friend Elphie, she's the same as you."

"How curious," said Elphaba in a tight voice, "that he should stand in our room and drink our water and tell you that he planned to talk to the Wizard."

Glinda frowned. "Well, not so very curious," she said thoughtfully. "I mean, is it? There's the story of his receiving the same key as ours and the very fact that he looked as though he needed water. And I'd suppose I look approachable; I look like the sort who's open to ideas and such."

Elphaba, who had set her jaw and was frowning in thought, now snorted disbelievingly.

"Well!" said Glinda defensively. "It's true."

"In the future," said Elphaba tightly, "I should like it very much if you would not invite strangers in here. Or allow them to drink our water, for that matter. For all we know, he's already sent word back to Madame Morrible and she's—"

"That's paranoia talking," said Glinda. "I didn't tell him anything of interest and he seemed very much to be on our side of things."

"So he said."

"My instincts—"

"_Oh_." Elphaba's tone was acidic as she rose from the bed and began to pace. "Your instincts aren't _nearly_ as cultivated as you believe them to be. Intuition isn't suddenly bred purely because you happen to have a stray _thought_ every once in awhile."

Were it not for the rain outside, Elphaba was sure that the room would be unbearably quiet. She glanced down at the floor because the glimpse of Glinda's expression, so sincerely _stung_, filled her with the same cold feeling she'd had earlier in the warehouse.

After a long stretch of silence, Glinda spoke softly. "No, I'd suppose not," she said. She stared a bit at her hands. "I find it funny," she said, quiet and calm and not at all Glinda, a bit too foreign to Elphaba. "I find it funny, or… interesting, rather, that you have this unfailing compassion for Animals and these peculiar beliefs that you have. And yet, for humans, you have none. I find it interesting that you alternate between extraordinary kindness and unflappable cruelty."

She stood from the bed as well, but she was miles away and Elphaba was too frightened to try and reach her; she could only watch as Glinda cleaned up the dinner and straightened up the room. She could only watch. And feel cold and feel terrible and feel guilty.

"I don't want to know what you've done," said Glinda and she stopped a moment and regarded Elphaba. Perhaps there were tears in her eyes, perhaps Elphaba was too frightened to look. "I don't want to know what's happened to Drauc. I wish not to think of you that way."

She took the bed, then, and undressed and put out the light. Elphaba watched her from a chair and pretended again that she was protecting Glinda, protecting them both—mostly, though, she just felt sick.

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